Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

N.A.T.O. (Bases, Eastern Mediterranean)

Mr. Philips Price: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence whether, in view of the uncertainty in regard to the efficiency and use of the Suez Canal Defence Zone, he is considering with the other Governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Powers alternative bases inthe east Mediterranean.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence (Mr. Nigel Birch): No, Sir.

Mr. Price: Would it not be wise to regard Turkey as a more reliable base for defence arrangements at present than Egypt?

Mr. Birch: There is certainly something in what the hon. Gentleman says.

Mr. Shinwell: Why does the hon. Gentleman reply in the negative? Surely he must be aware that for several years now—and there is no reason to believe that there has been a change in the last two years—both Governments have been considering alternative bases in the Middle East—Cyrenaica, Cyprus and elsewhere? Has there been any change?

Mr. Birch: This question relates to consultation with N.A.T.O. countries. The countries which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned are outside the N.A.T.O. area.

Mr. Shinwell: Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that Turkey is not outside the N.A.T.O. area, and that Turkey is closely concerned with arrangements in She Middle East?

Mr. Birch: I am quite aware that Turkey is in N.A.T.O.

Mr. R. Harris: Even if the Government are not discussing this matter with the N.A.T.O. nations, may we take it that the Government themselves are considering some alternative base, having regard to the fact that they have announced—I think I am right in saying this—that they are considering the redeployment of our forces there? If they intend to redeploy them, we should like to know where they are to be redeployed.

Mr. Birch: The policy of Her Majesty's Government was given to the House in the last foreign affairs debate by the Foreign Secretary.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind the changed attitude of the Israeli people towards this matter and consider a possible agreement with them as to their territory?

Mr. Strachey: Could the Parliamentary Secretary tell us why he seems to ignore the position of Turkey in N.A.T.O., and whether it is not a question of our being in a position to reinforce Turkey rather than having bases on her territory?

Mr. Birch: Turkey is our ally in N.A.T.O., and we shall certainly do everything we can to support her.

Communist Countries (Armed Forces)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence if he will now give an estimate of the approximate size of the armed forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Communist countries similar to the estimates provided by the Minister of Defence in justification of our rearmament programme in 1951.

Mr. Birch: Since 1951, the combined strength of the armed forces of the Soviet Union has increased by 150,000 to 4,750,000, and that of the Eastern European satellites by nearly 120,000 to about 1,190,000. The Soviet increase is mainly due to the growth of the Navy. China has armed forces totalling over four million. In addition there are six to 10 million men in the militia.

Mr. Hughes: Can the Minister tell us this: as a result of all our rearmament during the last three years, we are relatively stronger?

Mr. Birch: Yes. We have something approaching a realistic defence, which we did not possess before.

Captain Duncan: As my hon. Friend has given the figures for men, could he give the figures for naval ships and submarines?

Mr. Birch: Not without notice.

Terminal Grants

Mr. George Craddock: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence the amounts of terminal grants paid to Service men in all the Services after two years' and up to 21 years'service, giving full particulars of how the average sum is made up in each instance.

Mr. Birch: As the answer contains a table of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the Official Report.

Mr. Craddock: While thanking the Minister for his promise to circulate the full reply in the Official Report, may I ask him whether he considers that the grants are satisfactory, having regard to the length of service which these men perform?

Mr. Birch: They are long-service grants. Yes, I certainly think they are.

Following is the answer:

TERMINAL GRANTS

(a) A terminal grant is payable to a Service man who gives Colour service after 31st August, 1950, and who when he is discharged, is entitled to a Service pension, to qualify for which he must normally have rendered at least 22 years' reckonable service.
(b) In certain special cases, 21 years' continuous reckonable service may be a qualification.
(c) Service men who, having entered into engagements to complete 21 or 22 years' service or re-enlisted to complete 22 years'service, are invalided with at least 12 years' reckonable service, may qualify for Service pension and hence for terminal grant.
(d) The rates of terminal grants, where it is granted in respect of 22 years' reckonable service, and in the cases where (as explained at (b) above) 21 years' continuous reckonable

service is a qualification for the grant, are as follows:—

£


Private (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
100


Corporal (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
150


Sergeant (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
200


Staff Sergeant (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
250


Warrant officer, Class II (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
275


Warrant officer, Class I (and equivalent rank in the other Services)
300

An invalided Service man who (see (c) above) is entitled to the grant by virtue of not less than 12 years' reckonable service receives a proportion of the rate for 22 years'service, according to the length of his reckonable service, subject to a minimum grant of £100.

Full details were given in Appendix II of Cmd. 8323 of 1951.

SERVICE GRATUITIES

These are set out in Command Paper 6715 of 1945, paragraphs 34 and 53.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY

Trade Vacancies (Recruiting Information)

Commander Scott-Miller: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will provide his recruiting officers with information to enable them to state definitely to a would-be recruit that vacancies are, or are not, available in any particular trade for which the man applies, thus avoiding subsequent disappointmen
The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head):Recruiting officers are kept informed of vacancies in the various trades. It is not, however, possible to guarantee at the time of enlistment that a man will be employed in a particular trade, since the vacancies vary from day to day and, on testing after entry, a man may not qualify for the trade he wishes. Recruiting officers know this.
Commander Scott-Miller: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that it would not only be fairer to the recruit to be told definitely whether there is a vacancy but also a help to recruiting generally in encouraging volunteers to come forward?

Mr. Head: Yes, Sir. It would be very good for recruiting and would please everybody, but unfortunately one cannot


tell when a man is recruited, until he has been tested, whether he is competent for that particular trade.

Ceremonial Drill (Man-hours)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for War how many man-hours were spent on ceremonial drill in the British Army during the last period of six months for which figures are available.

Mr. Head: No figures are available.

Mr. Swingler: Why not? Has not the War Office any information about how much ceremonial drill there is in the training programme for recruits? Surely it should be possible to get the information.

Mr. Head: Ceremonial parades are held on occasions like Trooping the Colour or on other occasions where the Army wants to pay tribute to some particular event. I think that it would be a waste of time for the Army and for everyone else to call for details of ceremonial parades.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Cannot my right hon. Friend consider having a short and very sharp course of ceremonial drill for the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler)?

Strengths (Disposition)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for War what percentages of men in the Army are now overseas, in Germany and in the United Kingdom, respectively.

Mr. Head: Since the war we have not given this regional breakdown of strengths.

Mr. Swingler: Did not the Secretary of State last year give figures of the percentage of recruits overseas, and if it is not possible to give the exact figures mentioned in the Question relating to Germany and the United Kingdom, could he give us figures similar to those which were given last year?

Mr. Head: No, Sir. What I said last year was that 80 per cent, of the fighting formations of the British Army were overseas. We have never given a complete breakdown of our strength in this country as compared with overseas

because we think that there are other people besides the hon. Gentleman who might like to know the figures.

Mr. Swingler: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman say what is now the figure comparable to that which the Secretary of State gave last year?

Mr. Head: That is quite a different question from the one on the Order Paper, and I should like the hon. Gentleman to put it down.

Training and Administration

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for War to what extent he has made improvements in the British system of Army training and administration as a result of studying the systems prevailing in Commonwealth and North Atlantic Treaty countries.

Mr. Head: There is a constant exchange of information and experience with the armies of other countries of both the Commonwealth and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Mr. Swingler: Would it not be worth while for the War Office to send a working party to tour the Commonwealth countries and the countries of our N.A.T.O. allies in order to study their methods of training and administration, and discover how it is that all these other countries are able either to dispense with conscription altogether or to maintain a very much Shorter period of compulsory service than we have in this country?

Mr. Head: The correct answer to that question wouldbe very long. I would point out that these countries have sent considerable missions to find out how we run our schools and so on, and that the Commonwealth position regarding conscription is very different from our own.

Non-Combatant Service (Personnel)

Mr. Simmons: asked the Secretary of State for War how many private soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers were employed in non-combatant service on 1st January, 1954.

Mr. Peart: asked the Secretary of State for War how many men, National Service men and Regulars, respectively, are engaged in non-combatant tasks.

Mr. Head: All ranks of the Army are trained in combatant duties. The borderline between combatant and non-combatant service is necessarily so arbitrary, and indeed controversial, that I can give no worth-while figures.

Mr. Simmons: That is an amazing reply. The right hon. Gentleman himself was one of those who complained bitterly about the tail of the Army. May we know whether the tail is growing or diminishing? Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give us any idea at all?

Mr. Head: I remain as one who is always opposed to the tail, and I should like to get more teeth and less tail. I would point out that the hon. Gentleman is asking me for an exact percentage, and it is extremely difficult to say at what period in a division someone stops being a tooth and starts being a tail.

Mr. Peart: Surely the Minister should reconsider the position. Cannot he answer Question 16, which deals with National Service men and Regulars, because I am certain the figures are available?

Mr. Head: If the hon. Gentleman will define to me what is a non-combatant, I will try to answer the question.

Captain Duncan: Is it not an insult to the Army Catering Corps to describe Army cooks as menials?

Mr. Dugdale: Canthe right hon. Gentleman explain these difficulties, which he has rightly stressed, to his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who has talked constantly about this question of the tail?

Mr. Head: No, Sir. I have talked about the tail. I interpret the tail to be large headquarters and unduly big administrative units. If I were to give an arbitrary figure, I think that the ratio of the teeth to the tail is 1·3 to one, but I do not think that is an entirely fair one.

Mr. Simmons: asked the Secretary of State for War how many private soldiers were employed at batmen, cooks, waiters and in other menial services, designed to add to the personal comfort and convenience of officers, on 1st January, 1954.

Mr. Head: Batmen and cooks and orderlies for officers'messes are provided oil scales designed to meet essential needs with all possible economy. The scales are below the pre-war ones.

Mr. Simmons: I want the numbers of all those people engaged in the Army who look after someone else's personal comfort. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider abolishing these menial duties for men engaged as soldiers and employ civilians to do the job?

Mr. Head: I am limited as to the number of civilians that I can employ. I would point out that these organisations have to go overseas and fight, and one cannot have civilians cooking for officers and looking after them if they have to go and fight in Malaya. It just does not work. We have to have these people. Hon. Members have cooks and waiters in the House of Commons, and I do not see why officers should not have them.

Mr. Simmons: Why should there be cooks for officers in the front line, when Tommy has to cook his food in his mess tin; why cannot the officers do the same?

Mr. Head: The hon. Gentleman, to whom I pay great tribute, was engaged in static warfare in 1914, and I have no doubt that what he says was correct then; but at the present time, in mobile warfare, we have special cooks to cook for him.

Mr. Shinwell: The right hon. Gentleman has raised the question of the number of cooks and waiters in service in the House of Commons, but if he asked a Question as to how many were employed in this staff, he would get a correct reply.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Would my right hon. Friend make it clear, because there seems tobe some misunderstanding, that these are not menial jobs and that these men, in addition to doing these jobs, are fully-trained soldiers?

Soldiers (Costs)

Mr. Simmons: asked the Secretary of State for War to give, as separate items, the cost to the taxpayer of providing food, clothing, accommodation, equipment and arms and ammunition to a private soldier in 1938 and in 1953.

Mr. Head: The approximate annual costs of feeding, clothing and housing a soldier in 1938 and 1953 respectively were: food, £25 and £48; clothing, including personal equipment, £3 and £14; and accommodation, £20 and £45.
The cost of arms, ammunition and other equipment cannot realistically be related to the individual soldier.

Discharge by Purchase

Mr. Chetwynd: asked the Secretary of State for War how many applications for discharge by purchase have been received since 1952; how many have been granted; and what is the total sum paid.

Mr. Head: Since 1st January, 1953, discharge has been approved in 1,409 cases and receipts up to 31st December, 1953, were about £38,000. All qualified applicants were granted discharge except for 76 cases of deferment for six months or less: these were mostly bandsmen.

National Service Men (Reserve Training)

Mr. Chetwynd: asked the Secretary of State for War how many soldiers have completed their period of National Service since January, 1951; how many have been transferred to the Reserve Forces for training; and how many are now undergoing Reserve training.

Mr. Head: By 31st December last year, 8,715 officers and 313,000 other ranks had completed their whole-time service and been transfered to the Reserve Forces for training. All these men, with a very few exceptions, will carry out part-time training.

Mr. Chetwynd: Is the Secretary of State satisfied that we are getting full military value from this period of Reserve training in the Territorial Army?

Mr. Head: I do not believe that arrangements will ever be perfect, but our object is to get the best value both for the men and out of them that we possibly can in part-time training.

Mr. Chetwynd: asked the Secretary of State for War how many soldiers undergoing Reserve training are serving in units for which they were not trained during their period of National Service;

and how many are receiving no training because suitable units are not available within reasonable reach of the reservist's home.

Mr. Head: Of those transferred to part-time service between 1st July, 1952, and 31st December, 1953, about one man in seven was transferred to a corps or arm in which he had not done his whole-time service. Where there is no suitable Territorial Army unit near a man's home, he carries out his part-time training in the Army Emergency Reserve elsewhere.

Double Bunks

Mr. George Craddock: asked the Secretary of State for War how many men in the Army are sleeping in two-tier bunks; if he will name the camps where this occurs, with the figures for each camp; and when it is proposed to bring this state of affairs to an end.

Mr. Head: About 3,500 men. I am sending the hon. Member details of each of the 20 camps concerned. I am anxious to do away with double bunks, and the number of men using them has been reduced in the past year by over 3,000.

Mr. Craddock: Surely that is a deplorable number of people in the Service who are still serving under these conditions. Cannot the Minister speed up this matter and give our men the conditions to which they are entitled?

Mr. Head: My problem is very closely related to that of the housing problem. If we could build barracks rapidly, the whole problem would be overcome. We are trying to get this matter settled as quickly as we can.

Territorial Army (Volunteers)

Mr. Peart: asked the Secretary of State for War the strength of the voluntary element in the Territorial Army; and what is the increase in the last 12 months.

Mr. Head: At the beginning of this year, volunteers in the Territorial Army numbered 60,310 and National Service volunteers 55,776. In 1953 there was an increase of some 18,000 National Service volunteers and a decrease of about 7,000 direct volunteers.

Mr. Peart: Will the Minister bear these figures in mind carefully, and will he consider also introducing some special form of incentives?
Mr. Head: I have these figures very much in mind.

Mr. Shinwell: Is not the number of volunteers for the Territorial Army fewer now than three or four years ago? Does the right hon. Gentleman recall how he complained about our inactivity and lack of imagination and influence? Can he explain his failure in this respect?

Mr. Head: The right hon. Gentleman's question displays an abysmal ignorance of the problem. The point is, as he knows, that the volunteers who are not National Service men are inevitably getting older—nobody can avoid that. Therefore, in the future the Territorial Army must rely for its volunteer element on men who were originally serving part-time on National Service.

Mr. Shinwell: When did the right hon. Gentleman make that discovery? He displayed abysmal ignorance of the situation when he was on this side of the House.

Mr. Head: What we urged upon the right hon. Gentleman was that his efforts should be directed to retaining as many of the direct volunteers as possible, and to inducing the part-time National Service man to stay on. That is what we are belatedly doing.

Mr. Ede: Are we to understand that the Government have abandoned the hope of getting volunteers for the Territorial Army before the National Service age?

Mr. Head: I should not like to give an answer without notice, but I think it is a rarity at the moment for men to volunteer before they are called up for National Service.

War-time Divisions

Mr. Wigg: asked the Secretary of State for War the number of divisions which Great Britain would produce in the event of another world war.

Mr. Head: We do not disclose plans for the expansion of the Army in war.

Mr. Wigg: I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman realises how remarkable is his reply. Is he aware that he authorised General West to give a broadcast in which General West said that there would be 40 divisions? How is it, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman cannot give the number but his nominee can?

Mr. Head: With second sight, I have brought a copy of General West's broadcast with me. General West was asked whether in the future there would be a Commonwealth division, and he illustrated the reasons why he did not think there would be one. He said that this country would produce the maximum number of divisions possible in the next war, and the figure he quoted was about the number which we had in the last war and was given as an instance of the size of the effort that is likely to be made.

Mr. Shinwell: Is the right hon. Gentleman, perhaps unwittingly, deceiving the House? Will he be good enough to read the relevant paragraph in the broadcast? Does it not clearly show that General West said in reply to a question that he expected 40 British and 20 Australian divisions would be deployed in the next war? Does it not say that?

Mr. Head: I have a copy of the text. It is rather long, but I will hand it to the right hon. Gentleman.

Hon. Members: Read it.

Mr. Speaker: Order. If it is a long statement, it ought to be circulated.

Soldier's Disappearance, Fayid

Mr. H. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he is now in a position to make a full report upon the disappearance of 22800177 Acting Bombardier R. W. Pyper of the 71st H.A.A. Regiment, Royal Artillery, following a hostile attack on Monday, 11th January, 1954, on the Old Cairo Road, Fayid.

Mr. Head: I have not yet received the full court of inquiry proceedings. I can, however, say that on 11th January this soldier was driving in a truck in a convoy of three vehicles between Tel-el-Kebir and Fayid. Both he andthe driver disappeared when this truck, after falling behind the convoy, was seized by a gang of Egyptians. The most careful investigation was made and is continuing, but I


regret there is still no news of these men. I would offer my deepest sympathy to their parents in their anxiety. They will be informed as soon as anything further is known.

Mr. Johnson: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what co-operation he has had from the Egyptian Government? If the answer is "None,"will he bear in mind that serious incidents of this nature are having a very harmful effect on the minds of parents of National Service men? Will he not consider taking much more aggressive and drastic action against the Egyptian Goavernment?

Mr. Head: Her Majesty's representative in Cairo has made strong representations about this and other matters to the Egyptian Government.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Will the Secretary of State ask the Foreign Office to make it perfectly plain to the Egyptians that those who most want an agreement on the Suez question find that such incidents as this are a great obstacle to any progress?

Mr. Head: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Dugdale: What help have we actually received from the Egyptian Government?

Mr. Head: I speak only for my Department. As far as the finding of these two men is concerned, I am not aware of any assistance that we have had.

Bermuda Garrison

Mr. Wigg: asked the Secretary of State for War the number and composition of the proposed Bermuda garrison; for what reason it is being established; and the movement and annual upkeep costs involved.

Mr. Head: Two hundred and fifty men of the infantry and supporting services are being sent to Bermuda at a cost of some £25,000. Their maintenance will cost about an extra £100,000 a year. The garrisonis being re-established to help maintain the British position in the Western Atlantic.

Mr. Wigg: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that this is absolutely disgraceful at a time when this country has no strategic reserve, and that to send out even only 250 men at the whim of the

Prime Minister is to expose our weakness and to do our defence policy no good?

Mr. Head: I think that 250 men in Bermuda can pay a very good dividend in keeping the flag flying there.

Lord John Hope: Is any part of the cost of this garrison to be met by the Bermuda Government?

Mr. Head: In view of their anxiety to have such a garrison and their generosity in the past, I am sure that we shall not be disappointed at what they contribute.

Mr. Bellenger: What induced the Secretary of State to withdraw the garrison in the first instance? Has he been overruled by the Prime Minister in reinstating this garrison in Bermuda?

Mr. Head: These matters have to be considered on their merits, and this garrison was sent back.

Mr. Shinwell: Is it not true that the only merit in sending these 250 men to Bermuda was to please the Prime Minister after his visit?

Mr. Head: If the right hon. Gentleman goes on like this, I shall have to accuse him of having got hold of a "leak."

Mr. Wyatt: Is not this another instance, exactly the same as that of the rifle, of the Prime Minister overruling the War Office?

Life Guards' Officers (Resignations)

Mr. Wigg: asked the Secretary of State for War how many officers in the Life Guards have applied to resign their commissions during the periods 1st January, 1953, to 30th June, 1953, and 1st July, 1953, to 31st December, 1953, respectively, separate figures being stated for each period.

Mr. Head: In the first half-year, two; and in the second, one.

Obsolete Radar Equipment, West Bromwich

Mr. Dugdale: asked the Secretary of State for War how it has come about that 1,000 cases of new Government radar equipment are now lying in Messrs. Cashmore's scrap yards at West Bromwich.

Mr. Head: These stores weresurplus to our needs. They were ordered in 1945 but, owing to technical developments, the order was suspended in 1948. The stocks were declared obsolete last year and sold by tender in the normal way last December.

Mr. Dugdale: Is it not possible for these stocks to be sold to some other country or people? Are they only of use to the War Office and to nobody else? Is this not a possible example of the Government's failure to avoid waste in the Services, a failure which comes ill from a Government who have so often talked about avoiding waste?

Mr. Head: These stores, as I have said, were ordered long ago. They are of a type which I do not want to reveal in the House, but which I will tell the right hon. Member about privately, and are of use only to this country because of their particular function. There was no possibility of selling them to other countries and they are now obsolete and of no use to us.

Personal Cases

Mrs. Braddock: asked the Secretary of State for War why 22288898 Private Michael Brennanwas not issued with a railway warrant, and was allowed to proceed to Eire in uniform on his discharge from the Army on 12th January, 1954.

Mr. Head: A man discharged in the circumstances of which the hon. Member is aware does not get a railway warrant. Since on discharge he had not got any civilian clothing and was not entitled to an issue, he was allowed to keep a suit of battledress from which all Army insignia had been removed.

Mrs. Braddock: Is the Minister aware that this man was left in the Queen's uniform and had to travel from the barracks in Northwich to Liverpool, from Liverpool to Belfast, and to cross the Border from Belfast to Dublin in the Queen's uniform when he had been discharged from the Army? Under what circumstances does that happen? Will the right hon. Gentleman institute an inquiry into the whole of the matters affecting this man's service? He seems to have been put to the trouble of suffering so many indignities that it has made him completely hostile to the British Army.

Mr. Head: No, Sir. I have been into this matter. The man was discharged with ignominy. That being so, he was not entitled to a suit of plain clothes. When he was discharged he had £10 given to him as pay, and his unit gave him a suit of battledress. He said that when he got his pay he would buy a suit and return the battledress for which he would then have received £1 12s. He did not do this and he went off on his own initiative. I do not see what else the authorities could have done.

Mrs. Braddock: Is it the usual thing to leave a man, who is discharged in that sort of way from the Army, in the Queen's uniform, to travel about the country? Is there not something wrong with the whole system that allows that sort of thing to happen?

Mr. Head: As I havealready told the hon. Lady, all the badges and insignia were removed. Battledress is used for certain jobs in this country without any insignia that would give any indication of what the man is.

Mr. Yates: asked the Secretary of State for War how far it is his practice to receive reports from local medical practitioners in respect of National Service men, in view of the fact that National Service man 22872618 Private Godfrey Rudge was examined by his local medical practitioner and certified to be suffering from active ear disease before Ms entry into the Army; to what medical grade this soldier was reduced after his return from Egypt; and why, in view of the fact that it is considered necessary for him to undergo an operation, he refuses to consider theadvisability of releasing him from Her Majesty's Forces.

Mr. Head: Careful consideration is given to all reports from local medical practitioners, but there is no record of any such report to the War Office in this case. Private Rudge, after his return from Egypt, was, on 17th December, 1953, considered fit for service in base and communication areas in temperate climates. While an operation is advisable, he does not want it. He is still fit for service without it.

Mr. Yates: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that had the War Office consulted the local medical practitioner it would have known that this man was


certified—I have the certificate here—to be suffering from an active ear disease before he entered the Army, and he would not have been sent to Egypt and then invalided back? Does the right hon. Gentleman know that the parents of this boy refused to agree to an operation and is he also aware that they had had six sons, two of whom had been killed, and that they were naturally very anxious about this boy? Will the right hon. Gentleman, in those circumstances, reconsider the matter, especially in view of the fact that the man is not doing anything at all except running about doing errands?

Mr. Head: We cannot consult every medical practitioner, but we encourage men who have trouble to bring a medical certificate at their examination. This man was passed fit for these duties in temperate climates and it is his duty to serve. Whether he has an operation is his own affair, but he will not be made to have one if he does not want one.

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

34. Mr. Langford-Holt:To ask the Secretary of State for War why Christmas parcels sent by Mrs. W. Rowson, of 2 Meadow Terrace, Crewe Street, Shrewsbury, to her son 22748488 Trooper Rowson, B. Squadron, M.T. Troop, 1st Royal Tank Regiment, B.A.P.O. 3, serving in Korea, have not yet been received.

Mr. Head: I am looking into this case and will write to my hon. Friend.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Can we know to what Question that answer referred?

Mr. Speaker: I presume it was the answer to Question 34, but that Question was not asked.

National Service Man (Maintenance Cost)

Mr. Yates: asked the Secretary of State for War the cost of maintaining National Service man 22149853 Daniel Kemmings, Ladywood, Birmingham, since he commenced his National Service nearly five years ago to date.

Mr. Head: Up to 31st January this year, the cost to the Army had been about £300.

Mr. Yates: Would that include the cost of detention, because this man has been in the Army for more than five years without completing his National Service? Is it not very uneconomic to keep a man as long as that?

Mr. Head: A good deal of the cost of this man during this period was paid by the Home Secretary.

Unsatisfactory Soldiers (Retention)

Mr. Yates: asked the Secretary of State for War, what is the practice of his Department regarding the holding of men called up for National Service who have proved themselves incapable of being efficient soldiers; and, in view of the fact that National Service man 22149853 Daniel Kemmings, Ladywood, Birmingham, commenced his National Service nearly five years ago and has still to complete a sentence of nine months' detention before his release, if he will consider the advisability of an earlier release for this man.

Mr. Head: In serious cases the man's whole-time service is prematurely ended. I can find no grounds in Private Kemmings'case for interference with the sentence.

Mr. Yates: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that a National Service man who goes into the Army for more than five years and proves to be entirely unsatisfactory should still be retained in the Army? Is he aware that this man complains of the treatment he received, and that he complained before he was given a court-martial that he was actually handcuffed to the bed for four days? Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that the man has been locked up for 16 hours a day for the past month and has not been permitted to read? Is that calculated to make him of any value to the country, and is there any use in keeping such a man in the Forces any longer?

Mr. Head: This man has been to prison and Borstal and has been under detention. If I were to set theprecedent that military release should follow indulgence in crime, it would be a most unfortunate policy.

Mr. S. Silverman: Would the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House


what is the purpose of retaining this man at public cost in the Services, where he is of no use, and keeping him in constant confinement in order to perform a service which he will not perform and which no one can make him do?

Mr. Head: I do not want to retain the man in the Services because of his value, but I do say to the hon. Gentleman that there is a certain equity in these matters. If the man's behaviour is entirely unsatisfactory and automatically he gains his release, I believe it is unfair to the men who behave themselves.

Citadel, Plymouth Hoe

Mr. Foot: asked the Secretary of State for War for what military purposes the Citadel on Plymouth Hoe is now maintained; what is the annual cost of maintaining the establishment; and how many persons are permanently stationed there.

Mr. Head: The Citadel is used by the Headquarters, Plymouth Garrison; 47 Coast Regiment, Royal Artillery; Headquarters, Coast Artillery Training Centre and School of Coast Artillery; and the garrison officers'mess. The present strength of these units is 42 officers and 455 other ranks. Also in the Citadel is a Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes families'shop and in or alongside it there are 45 married quarters. Last year the maintenance cost of the buildings, etc., was about £17,000.

Mr. Foot: In view of the military insignificance of this place, would the Minister consider handing it over to the Plymouth Corporation as some compensation for the various acts of aggression which his Department has carried out on Plymouth Hoe and which constitute the most successful military operation that has distinguished his term of office?

Mr. Head: I cannot consider that 42 officers and 455 other ranks are something of military insignificance. I understand that my hon. Friend the Undersecretary of State had a very successful interview with the Lord Mayor ofPlymouth. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will get in touch with him.

Mr. Foot: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, so far from that interview being successful, only a very small amount of land was restored by his

Department to the Plymouth Corporation and whole areas which were once held by Plymouth have now been taken from us by his Department? It seems that the conference was as successful as his other military campaigns?

Mr. Head: I think I ought to point out to the hon. Gentleman that if these lands were to be handed back they would not be handed to Plymouth but to the Commissioners of Crown Lands.

Mr. Foot: Very well, try that for a start.

Mr. Nicholson: Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the Citadel is well protected against any assault by the Devonport Foot?

Mr. Head: We hope to head them off.

Mr. Foot: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Citadel was first established in the reign of Charles II to try to cow the ancestors of the Foot family, and that it is time they got some recompense for the thievery which went on in the time of the Stuarts?

Mobile Columns

. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for War how many mobile battalions are in existence; and what training they are doing.

Mr. Head: There are 517 mobile columns, which I understand the hon. and gallant Member is referring to. The men in these columns carry out their normal duties and, in addition, take part in special exercises in this mobile rôle.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that an increase of 15 over the 502 mobile columns in existence in March, 1952, is a satisfactory rate of increase in view of the expenditure incurred in the interval?

Mr. Head: Yes, Sir. These mobile columns, formed from administrative units,are merely in being in order to act as extra reserves in the event of a serious crisis.

Forces, Germany (Atomic Artillery)

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for War whether British Forces in Germany are equipped with atomic artillery.

Mr. Head: No, Sir.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Can the right hon. Gentleman say to what extent the Army is still equipped with pre-1945 equipment, and to what extent the equipment is being modernised either in this form or in any other form?

Mr. Speaker: That is quite another question.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Can the Secretary of State for War state whether the forthcoming White Paper on Defence will have any comments to make on this very dangerous development of atomic artillery, and whether it is intended to equip British Forces with it in future?

Mr. Head: I do not think that I should anticipate the White Paper.

Air Trooping

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Secretary of State for War to what extent units or collective parties of troops have been transported by the Royal Air Force during the last nine months.

Mr. Head: During this period the Royal Air Force carried 734 men of 49 Infantry Brigade and equipment to Nairobi.

Mr. Bellenger: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that he is carrying out the promise he made when he presented the Army Estimates last year, when he said that unit transport and similar transport by the R.A.F. should be increased in the Army?

Mr. Head: What I said was that, except in an emergency, unit moves had to be done by ship, but that it was myhope to increase air trooping to the maximum extent.
30. Mr. Bellenger asked the Secretary of State for War what number of troops have been transported by private air companies at Government expense in the last nine months.

Mr. Head: About 100,000.

Mr. Bellenger: Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate the great disparity between the transport of troops by the R.A.F., on whom he would have to rely in war, and by private enterprise; and, therefore, would he reverse the situation

so that the R.A.F. is now trained in transporting troops rather than that it should be done by private enterprise?

Mr. Head: I do not think that any special training is needed for transporting troops; and we hope that the present means would be available also in war. This policy, which is followed in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air, is one which is best for the Royal Air Force and best for the efficiency of the trooping scheme.

Director of Education (Rank)

Mr. M. Stewart: asked the Secretary of State for War what rank is held by the Director of Army Education.

Mr. Head: Brigadier.

Mr. Stewart: Does not this put him somewhat at a disadvantage when dealing with colleagues in other Services who, I believe, hold a higher rank?

Mr. Head: I am aware of all the factors in this case.

Mr. Stewart: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is aware, and no doubt the officers concerned are acutely aware of it, so is he doing anything about it?

Mr. Head: I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman about this now. It is impossible.
Mr. Shinwell: Does the right hon. Gentleman regard the rank of brigadier as being very low at the War Office?

Mr. Head: I consider it to be a very handy rank.

·280 Ammunition

(U.K.—U.S.A. Report)

Mr. M. Stewart: asked the Secretary of State for War on what date the War Office were informed of the acceptance, by the United States Government, of the ·280 calibre ammunition.

Mr. Head: The Joint United States and United Kingdom report on the comparative trials, dated 4th October, 1950, recommended standardisation in the ·280 inch calibre. But this policy was not officially accepted by the United States Government.

Mr. Stewart: Will the right hon. Gentleman now answer the Question I asked—on what date, if any, did the


United States Government inform the War Office of their acceptance of this calibre?

Mr. Head: As I informed the House, and have just informed the hon. Gentleman, this recommendation was not accepted by the United States Government.

Mr. Stewart: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that on 1st February he informed the House that, as he put it:
the United States agreed to standardise on ·280 inch."—[OFFICIAL REPORT 1st February, 1954; Vol. 523, c. 100.]
and again later, that at one period the Americans accepted the ·280 inch? If those phrases "the United States" and "the Americans"did not mean, as he has now admitted, the United States Government, were they not somewhat misleading and lacking in candour?

Mr. Head: If the hon. Gentleman looks at the context in each case where I used the words "British" and "American"he could not in either case think that it was the Governments concerned who adopted those courses.

Mr. Stewart: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realisethat the whole House took him to be referring to the United States Government, and that no other interpretation was possible? Would he like to inform the House what are the penalties imposed by the Army Act on a private soldier for making a false statement?

Mr. Head: I particularly resent the suggestion that I was trying deliberately to mislead the House. If the hon. Gentleman would read that debate fairly—and I believe that the right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) would agree with me—he would realise that I never suggested that this Government or the United States Government at that period had decided upon standardisation of the ·280. I stand by that, but I will re-read the report.

Mr. Strachey: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that on various occasions, both in and out of this House, we invited him to withdraw the very strong implication, to put it no higher, which he certainly made, that the then British Government had accepted this?

Mr. Head: What I stated, and it is in Hansard, was that at a certain period when standardisation on the ·280 was suggested, it had been the policy of the War Office to standardise on the Belgian rifle.

Several Hon.: Membersrose—

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Michael Stewart.

Combined Cadet Force (School Grants)

Mr. M. Stewart: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will intimate to governing bodies of schools in which there are contingents of the combined cadet force, that in future grants will only be given to the force on condition that recruitment is voluntary.

Mr. Head: No, Sir.

Mr. Stewart: Does the right hon. Gentleman think it right that there should be imposed on boys of 14 a degree of compulsion which the nation does not impose even on young men of call-up age?

Mr. Head: It would be most unwise if I were to interfere with the running of schools. Presumably the conditions of schools are made known to parents who send their boys there voluntarily.

Church Parades, Southern Command

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Secretaryof State for War what church parades have taken place in Southern Command during the last six months; in what areas and garrisons; and to what extent these church parades were voluntary.

Mr. Head: I am getting this information and will write to the hon. Member.

Mr. Wyatt: Why has not the Secretary of State got it already, as I put down the question nearly a week ago?

Mr. Head: The hon. Gentleman says he put down the Question nearly a week ago, but I would point out to him that it appeared on the Order Paper only on Friday.

Mr. Wyatt: Even so, surely the right hon. Gentleman has had plenty of time. Is he not aware that church parades have been taking place in this Command contrary to the provisions of Queen's Regulations, which say that they may only


take place on occasions of local or national importance, that quite a number have taken place, and that I was asked about this by an indignant garrison in an "Any Questions" broadcast?

TRADE AND COMMERCE

Potatoes (Exports to Eastern Germany)

Mr. P. Wells: asked the President of the Board of Trade why the export of potatoes to Eastern Germany is not permitted.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Heathcoat Amory): There are no restrictions in this country on the export of potatoes to Eastern Germany.

Mr. Wells: Would the right hon. Gentleman make that information available to the Press and to the agricultural industry, because it is generally believed that there is a prohibition in regard to this trade?

Mr. Amory: I think that the answer which I have given today to this Question will receive publicity.

Furniture (Kite Mark)

Mr. Porter: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many British furniture manufacturers have now adopted the British Standards Institution Kite mark in reference to their production of items of household furniture.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss): The British Standards Institution informs me that it has so far licensed 207 manufacturers to apply the Kite mark to their furniture.

Mr. Porter: In view of the assurance given by the Minister when we changed from the Utility Scheme to the D Scheme that we had no reason to assume that the standard of furniture would go down, may I ask the Minister what he is doing at present to put that into operation by seeing that every manufacturer of furniture adopts the Kite mark?

Mr. Strauss: I am satisfied that what I said in that debate has been carried out. I never said that all manufacturers would apply the Kite mark; what I said was that it would be the public who

would effectively determine this. The public can now obtain furniture of various styles with the Kite mark if it so desires.

Mr. Gaitskell: May I press the hon. and learned Gentleman on this matter? Could he tell us what proportion of the furniture manufacturers have applied this mark? Is he not aware that before the war there was a great deal of unsatisfactory and shoddy work produced which consumers could not detect in the first instance? Is it not agreed that consumers need protection in this matter?

Mr. Strauss: I cannot tell the right hon. Gentleman the proportion, and indeed mere figures of manufacturers would be a little misleading on account of the different sizes of the various concerns, but some of the large manufacturers are applying the mark. The whole House shares the desire that the public should not buy shoddy furniture but, as the public is now able to obtain furniture of the various types with the Kite mark if it so desires, I do not share the view that the public is incapable now of satisfying its wants either by obtaining furniture with this mark or by going to retailers on whom it can rely.

Herring (Sales to U.S.S.R.)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the President of the Board of Trade what recent steps he has taken to increase the export of Scottish herring for consumption in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Henderson Stewart): I have been asked to reply.
During 1953 approximately 169,000 barrels of cured herring were exported to Russia, as compared to 162,000 in 1952. The Herring Industry Board is at present negotiating for the sale of rough packed herring from the winter catch. The Government will do everything in their power to assist the Board to promote further sales of herring to Russia.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the Minister aware that Scots herring continue to be more and more popular amongst the Red Army and that the consumption is increasing; and will he give an assurance that herring will not be banned as a strategic material?

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I think the best answer is that I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not mixing up cured herring and red herring.

Damascus Trade Fair (British Representation)

Mr. Grimond: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will take steps to ensure that Britain is adequately represented at the forthcoming Damascus Trade Fair.

Mr. Amory: In accordance with normal practice, the Damascus Fair has been brought to the attention of British industry and I understand that a number of firms intend to exhibit. The question of Government participation is under consideration.

Mr. Grimond: May I ask the Minister if he will give this matter favourable consideration, because our commercial prestige in the Middle East will depend a good deal on what we make of the opportunity presented by this fair, and there is some anxiety as to whether we are being adequately represented?

Mr. Amory: I agree on the importance of this question, and I am hoping to receive the advice of the ExhibitionsAdvisory Committee on this matter early next month.

Equipment (Proposed Russian Purchase)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has seen the official pronouncement of the Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade about proposals to import £400 million-worth of equipment from the United Kingdom; and if, following the list of items specified in that statement, he is in a position to make any estimate of the proportion of this figure represented by items controlled on strategic grounds.

Mr. Amory: Yes, Sir, and my right hon. Friend has studied it with much interest. The list is not sufficiently specific for me to calculate exactly how much of the business proposed would be in items subject to strategic controls. But, as a very rough estimate, I should think that rather less than half of the business, perhaps up to a value of 2,000 million roubles, would be found to be free from these controls. At the official rate of

exchange, which the right hon. Gentleman has used, this would amount to some £175 or £180 million.

Mr. Wilson: Would the right hon. Gentleman make it his business to have discussions with the British businessmen who have been to Moscow, I think with the Government's approval, and have now returned? Following those discussions, will he look at the strategic list to make sure that, whilst we have complete control over all goods of military value, the list is pruned of any goods that can now be quite safely supplied?

Mr. Amory: We are very much looking forward to meeting these businessmen on their return and discussing their experiences with them. So far it seems to have been a most useful visit. As regards the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's question, the strategic list is under frequent consideration by the Government.

Mr. Wilson: On a point of order. Questions No. 84 and No. 85, in my name, and Question No. 82 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkdale (Mr. Keenan) were put down for answer today by the right hon. Gentleman as representing the Board of Trade. We heard this morning that he had transferred them from himself to himself in another capacity, with the result that we do not get an answer orally today. In view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is obviously here, and thatby statute both the Ministry of Materials and the Board of Trade are jointly responsible for these Questions, would it not have been possible for the right hon. Gentleman, while here, to have answered those Questions?

Mr. Speaker: That is a little too complicated for me. I cannot follow it.

TREASURY O. &amp; M. DIVISION (RECOMMENDATIONS, COVENTRY)

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make available to Members of Parliament copies of the recommendations made by the Organisation and Methods Division of the Treasury for the reorganisation of local government in Coventry.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): It is for Coventry Corporation to decide what information should be made available, since the Organisation and Methods Division were acting as the Corporation's confidential advisers. I understand, in fact, that documents prepared for the Corporation, setting out those recommendations by O. and M. Division which are likely to be of greatest general public interest, are now on sale from the Corporation.

MEAT AND TOBACCO (CONSUMPTION FIGURES)

Mr. Osborne: asked the Chancellor of the Excheqer if he is aware that in a recent Civil Service examination it was stated that consumption per head in the United Kingdom of meat was 133 lb. in 1900, 110 lb. in 1934 to 1938 and 75 lb. in 1951, whereas tobacco consumption was 30 oz. in 1900, 62 oz. in 1934 to 1938 and 71 oz. in 1951; and from where these figures were obtained.

Mr. R. A. Butler: Yes, Sir. I understand that the figures were quoted from the "Economist" of 30th May last.

Mr. Osborne: If the nation is not able to eat as much as it wants and also smoke as much as it wants at the same time, would my right hon. Friend prefer the nation to eat or to smoke?

Mr. Butler: I had better refer my hon. Friend to the "Economist," which is the source of these figures.

GOVERNMENT POLICY (COMMUNICATIONS TO FOREIGN POWERS)

Mr. George Craddock: asked the Prime Minister if he will formulate a classification of relative importance for signals or other communications conveying Government policy to foreign Powers; and if he will ensure that no signal above a certain level of importance shall be sent out from a Department without the assent of the Minister concerned.

The Prime Minister (Sir Winston Churchill): I am advised that no such classification is practicable.

Mr. Craddock: Is the Prime Minister aware that his answer will cause dismay up and down the country? [HON. MEMBERS"Resign."] Does he not think that communications carrying high policy to foreign Powers should have the assent of the Minister or even assent at Cabinet level? Does he not think that further consideration should be given to this most serious matter?

The Prime Minister: I hope that there will not be too much dismay, because we have gone on for quite a long time without a written Constitution.

NATIONAL FINANCE

Malayan Rubber (Government Purchases)

Mr. Erroll: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is prepared to assist the Malayan rubber industry by making Government purchases in the same way as assistance was given to the British textile industry during a similar period of depression in 1952.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No, Sir, the analogy is not exact.

Mr. Erroll: But is it not the analogy sufficiently close for the Chancellor to do something to help this important Commonwealth industry?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. I discussed the problems of the rubber industry with growers and others in Malaya and anything that we can do, within the bounds of what is possible, we shall do.

Mr. Gaitskell: Did the right hon. Gentleman not say when he was in Malaya that the question of commodity agreements in relation to rubber would be discussed at the Sydney Conference? Would he now tell us whether it was discussed, and what agreement was reached there?

Mr. Butler: We had a debate on that subject, and if the right hon. Gentleman was unable to elicit information in the course of the debate he is not likely to be able to do so in the course of Questions and answers.

Mr. Gaitskell: Because the right hon. Gentleman refused an answer to a question of mine in debate, I am afraid that he is not going to stop me asking it


again in Question time. This is a serious matter for Malaya, and indeed the whole Commonwealth. Has the right hon. Gentleman any intention of trying to reach some agreement in regard to a commodity scheme for rubber in the United States, or in the Commonwealth if the United States will not assist?

Mr. Butler: The right hon. Gentleman has noticed certain difficultiesarising from the report of the Randall Commission with reference to United States policy. As regards United Kingdom policy, we have purchased a considerable amount of rubber. Problems that arise as to rubber stockpiling are those of whether the cost should be borne by other nations as well as ourselves—which is absolutely vital, otherwise the charge would be too much on United Kingdom funds—and the extent to which we can obtain the co-operation of the grower. It was in order to have some idea of that co-operation that I had conversations in Malaya.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that commodity agreements on rubber and tin and other things are really vital to the prosperity of South-East Asia? Will he try to get the United States and Commonwealth Governments to take this matter seriously in order that the struggle for democracy in South-East Asia may be successful?

Mr. Butler: It is being taken seriously. A tin agreement is already being considered in Malaya and, to show howseriously we are considering this matter, the British Exchequer is supporting the Malayan Budget in order to support those great social developments to which the right hon. Gentleman attaches so much importance.

Art Galleries (Upkeep)

and 48. Sir L. Plummer: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what grants the Arts Council is making in the present financial year to art galleries which are threatened with closing, or are in financial difficulties;
(2) if he is aware that many public art galleries dependent on trust funds are finding that their revenues are insufficient to keep them going; and whether he will take steps to provide such financial

assistance as is required to prevent their closing.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I am aware that the Arts CouncilReport for 1952–53 drew attention to the difficulties of privately founded art galleries but I have nothing to add to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary gave on 26th November to my hon. Friend, the Member for Westmorland (Mr. Vane). I am informed that the Arts Council has this year made a grant of £500 for certain specific activities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The Council would not, of course, make grants to municipal galleries.

Sir L. Plummer: Is the right hon.Gentleman aware that the prospect facing some of these galleries is very grave indeed because of the diminution of their revenue? In view of the tangible proof which he has given that he is interested in some of these galleries, will he try to do something to help the Arts Council to save them from extinction, particularly the Whitechapel Art Gallery?

Mr. Butler: I take it that the hon. Member is aware of the article in the Arts Council Report which I have in front of me, a copy of which I shall be glad tosend him. If he wishes me to pass further information to the Arts Council I will do so, but I do not wish to interfere with its discretion in the use of the funds which I have put at its disposal.

Balance of Payments (White Paper)

Mr. Gaitskell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will include in the next balance of payments White Paper a statement showing the balance of payments between the sterling area and the rest of the world.

Mr. R. A. Butler: A United Kingdom estimate of the net balance of payments between the sterling area and the rest of the world in 1951 and 1952 was given on page eight of the Economic Survey for 1953 (Cmd. 8800). I expect the next survey to contain a similar estimate for 1953.

Mr. Gaitskell: The Question I asked was about the balance of payments White Paper. Would the Chancellor please consider this again? He publishes in the


White Paper the balance of payments of the sterling area with the dollar area and with the European Payments Union, and I should have thought that there would be no difficulty about adding the rest of the world.

Mr. Butler: These details are primarily concerned with the balance of payments of the United Kingdom, and if the right hon. Gentleman obtains the information that he wants in the Economic Survey I should have thought that that would be satisfactory. It would be difficult to fulfil his exact demand but he will certainly get the information.

Old-Age Pensioners (Tea)

Mrs. Cullen: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider granting coupons for tea to old-age pensioners to enable them to have a supply at reduced rate.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No, Sir, I regret not. I would refer the hon. Lady to the reply given yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd).

Mrs. Cullen: In my estimation, the reply given yesterday was very unsatisfactory. Is the Chancellor aware that this section of the community comprises the folk who are suffering more than others because, owing to the rising cost of food, they are deprived of the necessities, such as a little butter and milk? Does he know that he is taking from them "the cup that cheers"—[HON. MEMBERS"Oh!"] It is all very well for hon. Members to say "Oh," but they should try to put themselves in the place of these old people and see if they would be better off.

Mr. Butler: The Government are well aware of the difficulties of the old-age pensioners. The arrangement in regard to tobacco was made following a sharp increase in the duty on imported tobacco. There is not an exact analogy in the case of tea as in most cases tea is duty-free. Also, such a scheme would involve a question much broader than that of tea alone. I am afraid that I cannot accede to the request of the hon. Lady.

Mr. Chetwynd: In view of the very strong feelings expressed, would the right hon. Gentleman consider increasing the old-age pension and meeting the case in that way?

BILL PRESENTED

TRANSPORT CHARGES, &c.

(MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL

"to amend the law relating to the charges of certain undertakings connected with transport and to the accounts and returns to be prepared by railway undertakings, being in either case undertakings which do not form part of the undertaking of the British Transport Commission; to revoke in part (with savings) Defence Regulation 56; to provide for the control of the number of passengers to be carried on public service vehicles, tramcars and trolley vehicles; to repeal the Railway Freight Rebates Enactments, 1929to 1943; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. Lennox-Boyd; supported by Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe and Mr. Molson; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 67.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[3RD ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

CIVIL ESTIMATES,
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE, 
1953–54

CLASS VIII. VOTE 9

Ministry of Food

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £35,334,900, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1954, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Food; the cost of trading services, including certain subsidies; a grant in aid; and sundry other services, including certain expenses in connection with civil defence.

3.32 p.m.

The Minister of Food (Major Lloyd George): The Ministry's original Estimate for 1953–54 was for £109·6 million. The Supplementary Estimate presented in November last provided for an additional £126·8 million, while the Supplementary Estimate now presented to the Committee is for £35·3 million. Thus, the total cash requirement for the Ministry for 1953–54 is now estimated at about £271·8 million. The additional sum of £35·3 million is required mainly in respect of two commodities—£24·3 million is required for eggs and £13·9 million for sugar. Smaller amounts are required for other commodities, but those are more than offset by savings in other directions, the net effect being a saving of £2·9 million, thus bringing the total cash figure down to the £35·3 million asked for in this Supplementary Estimate.
I do not think that anyone in any part of the Committee will disagree when I say that it has never been an easy matter to estimate correctly the expenditure of my Department, with an annual turnover of between £1,600 million and £1,700 million. It was not easy even during the period of strict control and rationing and it becomes even more difficult as we move from that period. When food is less plentiful and it is rationed, it is much easier

to estimate how much of each commodity is to be consumed than it is when a greater variety of food is available, as now.
Also, the rate of production and of shipping by our overseas suppliers play an important part in the formation of our estimates and these change for various reasons from time to time with consequential effects upon our cash requirements. Thirdly, and by no means lastly, our present obligations and the Agriculture Act of 1947 have to be honoured, I want the Committee to appreciate, regardless of exceptionally heavy production or fluctuations in demand at market prices. On this occasion it is a combination of these circumstances which has made it necessary to present this Supplementary Estimate.
A striking example of one of those difficulties can be seen in the biggest single item in this Estimate, the £24 million required for eggs and egg products. When the November Estimates were drawn up, the volume of home-produced eggs was running at about the level that could be expected at that time of the year. So, also, were retail prices. The rate of subsidy during October and November was small and past experience did not lead us to expect that there would be any substantial increase during the financial year. The flush season in eggs occurs in the early spring and the price schedule under the old fixed price system was always arranged with that in view. The present support price arrangements follow the same pattern.
November and December are normally the months of lowest egg production in the year. But in 1953 we had eggs in great abundance in November and December—I do not think that the figure has ever been approached since the war—and it was a period when the support prices were fixed high in anticipation of normal supplies. Several factors contributed to this unusual position in November and December. As we all know, the weather at that period was exceptionally mild. That, of course, had something to do with it. In addition, the derationing of feedingstuffs has given a fillip to the egg producer who has taken full advantage of his freedom to buy for his own requirements. Another very important contributing factor has been the great improvement in methods of production, particularly in respect of wintereggs.
The result of a combination of those three circumstances can be seen in the figures of eggs going through the packing stations into the shops. In December last, twice as many eggs went through the packing stations as in the same month in 1950. The increase was considerably over the 1951 and 1952 figures. I wish the Committee to remember that this great increase—indeed, we can call it the sort of flush which normally comes in the spring—came at a time when the support price was, asusual, at its highest. But pressure on supplies in the market pushed down retail prices to a level which had not been reached at that time of year since before the war.
Eggs are highly perishable commodities and the price has to be adjusted if supplies areto get to the public and not to be wasted. That has happened before, as my predecessors know full well. But in these unusual and unexpected circumstances the Exchequer was involved in an increasingly heavy liability in order to keep eggs moving and to honour our obligations to the producers.
I would remind the Committee of what would have been the position had the former fixed price system continued, together with the control of retail prices. It is quite clear that the pressure of supplies coming forward this winter has been such that the fixed retail prices in force a year ago could not have been maintained if the eggs were to get to the public. The fixed price to the producer in December, 1952, under the old fixed price system, was 6s. 1d. per dozen, compared with a support price last December of 5s. a dozen. With a support price of 5s. we have had to ask for this Supplementary Estimate of £24 million. But under the previous controlled price system the liability this winter would have been far greater, and might well have cost us about £35 million.
Before turning from eggs to sugar—and I propose to deal only with those two main items in this Supplementary Estimate—I wish to say a word or two about egg imports. Denmark is our largest overseas supplier, and has been ever since the war ended. Without these Danish eggs our position would have been very much worse during recent years, particularly in the winter. We did, in fact, pay a premium to obtain more eggs from

Denmark in the winter months. We also obtained small quantities from Holland, Australia and South Africa. But 23 per cent. of our total supplies of shell eggs in the present year are from imports, practically the same percentage as in 1952–53. We have incurred some losses on imported eggs during the last two or three months, because they are sold at slightly under the price which English fresh eggs will fetch, and in these abnormal months this has been below the price which we paid for them.
I move now from eggs to sugar, the other big item in the Supplementary Estimate, amounting, roughly, to £14 million. Approximately half of this figure is required to pay for sugar from Commonwealth sources under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. Unfortunately for ourEstimates, though fortunately from other points of view, there has been a considerable improvement on the earlier reports of shipments and production from some of these Commonwealth suppliers. In this country, also, there has been a particularly heavy crop of sugar beet. Actually, it is an all-time record, being about 770,000 tons this year compared with an average of between 600,000 and 650,000 tons.
Here, again, the exceptionally favourable season at the time of the harvest, and more efficient plant—another important matter—have been contributory factors in creating this record. While it is true that my Department has not purchased the sugar, the size of the crop in this country affects the cash position to the extent that the trade reduce their purchases from Ministry of Food stocks, which means that we shall have a higher stock on our hands on 31st March than we allowed for last November.
Rather surprisingly, the consumption of sugar after derationing was materially less than anticipated. This added further to the size of our stocks, although there are indications that the demand is picking up. Of course, this additional £14 million would be realised later as we sell our stocks. The total food subsidies for the year are now estimated at £325 million, compared with £294 million last November. As I explained to the Committee, the Supplementary Estimate is an estimate of cash requirements which does not necessarily correspond with the total of food


subsidies. The fact that in this Supplementary Estimate the increase in cash requirements is greater than the increase in subsidies is due to the substantial addition we are making to our stocks of sugar, about which I have already told the Committee.
Eggs, I repeat, account for most of the rise in the subsidies, but there are also increases in respect of one or two other commodities as well. I have purposely dealt only with the two main items, as I thought the Committee would want to know most about them. If there are other smaller points to which I have not referred, and about which information is required, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will deal with them later. I hope I have made clear to the Committee why I have to present this second Supplementary Estimate and that the Committee may remember what my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said about the Supplementary Estimates last year. He reminded the Committee that the expenditure, which is the same today, is in support of British agriculture and an investment in stock. I trust, therefore, that the Committee will approve this Supplementary Estimate.

Mr. Frederick Willey: Before the right hon. and gallant Gentleman concludes his speech, will he say a word about the increase asked for under Subhead A—salary increases?

Major Lloyd George: My hon. Friend will deal with that in greater detail, but I think it relates to an award as a result of arbitration.

3.49 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: The Minister has continued in his usual rôle of the great illusionist. He seems to live in a world of fantasy, quite divorced from the facts as they are, in which he is joined by the Parliamentary Secretary who, when I hear him, I occasionally think of as the sugar plum fairy. But the delusion has become chronic now and it is quite impossible to expect, either from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman or from his hon. Friend, an appreciation of what really is the food position.
I asked the right hon. and gallant Gentleman about the item relating to salary increases because I wondered if

he had thought of asking the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour to address his staff. I assume that his staff has suffered, as we all have, from the increased cost of living caused by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's policy.
To turn to the Estimates, in short the position is this. At the beginning of the year the right hon. and gallant Gentleman asked for £110 million. In December last we discussed afurther £127 million. He more than doubled his request to the Chancellor. Instead of asking for £110 million, he asked for £237 million. That was only two months ago. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman has revealed no new factor inthe situation. Yet he has asked the Committee for another £35,500,000. In other words, instead of asking for £110 million, he is now asking the Chancellor for an enormous increase. It must bear heavily upon the Chancellor.
When we last debated this matter only two months ago, the main argument of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was that this was only a mistake of 4 per cent. on turnover. According to his calculation, it is now a mistake of 5 per cent. on turnover. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman is the head of a great trading concern. If anyone else conducted his affairs like this, he would be in Carey Street within a few months. One cannot make a mistake of 5 per cent. on turnover unless there has been some incompetence and stupidity.
As the second leg of his excuse, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman also said, "We have to estimate 16 months ahead."That does not apply to this Supplementary Estimate. I want to draw the attention of the Committee to this. I raised the question of stocks in our last debate because from the knowledge that I had I was sure the Minister would come back with a further Supplementary Estimate. But the Minister brushed it off as being very unlikely, which was as definite a statement as we could expect from him.
This is an inexcusable miscalculation. As the Estimate shows, the miscalculation is under both heads which affect it. Since December last the Minister has found that the payments which his Department is Obliged to make will be £26,800,000 more than he then estimated. But he has also


been wrong about receipts. He now estimates the receipts to be nearly £8,500,000 less than his estimate of only two months ago. In other words, he has spent more and sold less, because the receipts of the Ministry come from the sales of food. Yet we are told that this is Britain with a plentitude of food.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: We are all eating much more.

Mr. Willey: I will come to that in a moment.
To deal with individual commodities—this should lead the hon. Member to intervene later in the debate—the Minister is now asking for more than £1 million for potatoes. What has happened in the last two months? The Minister told the House earlier that the potato crop was a record for all time. That is not so. The potato crop this year is more than it was last year, but it is less than in 1951 and 1950, considerably less than in 1949 and very substantially less than in 1948. The yield is, of course, a very exceptional one. However, I am quoting the Minister, and he said that the potato crop was a record for all time; but that is not so. We see now that there is to be a subsidy on potatoes of £7,800,000. This fact was concealed last time. I got the breakdown of the figures from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, but this fact did not appear. It now appears, and we ought to have a little more frankness from the Minister.
I now turn to the other commodities which have affected the result that we are debating this afternoon. Some of the changes under Subhead H are accounted for by increased selling prices. I have no complaint about this from an accounting point of view, because the Minister made it clear that we could not make any deductions about retail prices from the earlier Estimates. However, milk products are going up in price, and that reflects itself in this Estimate. They are going up in price although the consumption of butter is far less than it was pre-war and the consumption of butter and cheese is far less than itwas under the Labour Government—appreciably less. I am going by the import figures.

Major Lloyd George: I have given the hon. Gentleman figures showing that we

are eating 40 per cent. more cheese than we did pre-war.

Mr. Willey: But under the Labour Government we were eating more than 40 per cent. more cheese than we did before the war. Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman wish to correct that?

Mr. Nabarro: We are eating more red meat nowadays as well.

Mr. Willey: I shall come to meat in a moment.
These figures also reflect the failure of the Minister to realise stocks. This is confirmed if we look at the trading estimate, for that makes it clear that the Minister has not realised the stocks that he expected to realise, and the taxpayers ought to know that the slower the stocks are realised the greater is the burden on the taxpayers. Therefore, before we go to cereals, it is very disturbing to see, for instance, the slow way in which animal feedingstuffs other than cereals have moved from the Ministry. That illustrates what I am saying. Not only have they moved very slowly, but if we look at the trading and subsidy figures together, it is clear that the rate of loss is much higher than the Minister originally anticipated, and, indeed, estimated even last December.
I should like to know what sort of co-operation there is between the Ministry and the grain trade. After all, as a result of considerable pressure the right hon. and gallant Gentleman set the grain trade free. However, the agricultural correspondent of "The Times," who appears from his writings to be very knowledgeable on these subjects, although I do not always agree with his conclusions, wrote in that newspaper yesterday:
But there is disturbing talk about the intentions of the millers and feedingstuff manufacturers after next harvest. Some are boasting that they will be able to play the market down to slump prices by holding off buying home-grown grain in the weeks after harvest when farmers will urgently want to sell.
Is this the position? Is this partly the explanation of the present difficulties of the Minister regarding cereals? If it is, he had better show some virile, forceful action. Let me make it clear that I have no objection to the enterprising producer, but I have everyobjection to the enterprising distributor who holds the producer and the consumer to ransom.
To return to the commodity figures, some of the discrepancies arise because a mistake has been made on both accounts, the purchases by the Ministry having been greater and the realisation of stocks less than the Minister forecast in December. I cannot possibly begin to understand how a mistake of £14 million about sugar could have been made in two months. This is not a mistake over 16 months. It is a miscalculation made between December, when we last debated sugar, and the laying of the new Supplementary Estimate.
I want to say just a few more words about stocks. The only explanation of what has happened about grain is the mammoth miscalculation of the Ministry and its inept, unbusinesslike conduct of the very wide measure of decontrol. I always assumed that the Crazy Gang spent their evenings in the Victoria Palace but it is now clear that they spend their days in Dean Bradley House, because no measure of decontrol could have been carried out less expertly and more unwisely than that of the Ministry in relation to grain.
During our last debate, the Minister said, with a flush of innocence, that at the time the Estimate was made "there was no justification for assuming that there would be any significant fall" in grain prices. But everyone else assumed it; it was generally assumed. In fact, most people were surprised that it had not begun earlier. Moreover, the miscalculation of the Minister in stocking upafter he had taken the decision will cost the taxpayer millions of pounds.
I will not deal again with the details of the grey and black markets, but I should like to know how the Minister got on with his scheme for colouring grain red. I should like to know whether he made any progress with this fantastic scheme to cope with the black and grey markets by colouring the grain.
We have debated this matter before, and the fact is that we have been taking into this country 11 or 12 times the amount of Canadian barley that we did previously. We have now got the Board of Trade returns for the year, and we find that in the third quarter of this year we allowed into this country between two and three times the amount of animal feedingstuffs that we took in 1950, and finished

the year with having taken nearly twice as much as we did in 1950 and enormously more than we took in 1952.
Our farmers, advised and encouraged by the Government, have increased the production of coarse grains doublefold above our production before the war. What is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman going to do about this? Is his solution of this dilemma to put an ever-increasing burden on the taxpayer? He has abandoned the sensible, orderly pattern of buying which we had before, which was essential if we were to have orderly agricultural production in this country, and he has resorted to this peculiar formula of profits for the middleman without control and allowing the burden to fall upon the taxpayer.
Let us turn to sugar, which is the subject of an enormous miscalculation by the Ministry. I join with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman in congratulating the British Sugar Corporation on their magnificent work, and I am very glad also that he has tempered his views on public authorities.The Corporation have done very well, being inspired by public enterprise. I congratulate the Australians on the magnificent way in which they have increased their sugar production, but I call the attention of the Committee to this very important fact, which we debated in December. I then said that I had discovered a price variation in the Cuban Agreement, which explained why all the Cuban sugar was brought here so quickly. When we were told that these supplies would be spread over two years, it was really quite unreal, and gives us an illustration of how far the Minister is from the facts of life.
The Committee will remember that, during our last debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), whom I am glad to see back with us, asked the Minister what was the cost in dollars of the Cuban sugar, and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman said that it was 62 or 63 million dollars. Then, he corrected himself and said he thought it was 62 million dollars. Later, he got a note at the Box and said, "It is approximately 65 to 70 million dollars." That is about the margin of error that runs through all the remarks of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman.

Major Lloyd George: I said it was 62 or 63 million dollars, speaking from memory, and later I said I had had it checked and found that it was 65 million dollars. I suggest that that is not a bad feat of memory.

Mr. Willey: It is quite clear that, when sugar was to be one of the main subjects to be debated, the Minister ought to have made himself much more conversant with what was happening about sugar.
Let us see what has happened about sugar as far as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned. In the original Estimate, the Minister was able to assure the Chancellor that he would give him a credit; that is, make a profit of £900,000 for the Chancellor. On 2nd December, the Minister said that there would not be a credit, but that, instead, there would be an expenditure of £36,600,000. Now, only two months afterwards, the Minister was even more vague than he was about the price at which we bought the Cuban sugar. Now, we find that it will not be £36,600,000, but over £50 million. He gives no explanation of this grave miscalculation. Surely the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knows what goes on, knows what was purchased, and what will be purchased in a few months' time? [HON. MEMBERS"No."] I can quite understand the concern of some of my hon. Friends at this situation. This is also the concern of the taxpayer.
What is happening about stocks? The Minister has said nothing about the way in which stocks are being handled. There are no adequate facilities for the storage of grain in these quantities in this country, and I have said before—and it was not denied—that it has been dumped on airfields and anywhere where it can be shovelled. The same applies to sugar. It is being dumped all over the place. When my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) complained that it was dumped on waste ground, the Minister said that it was not on waste ground, but had been dumped on private ground. Well, it is still being dumped in the open, and sugar ought not to be dumped in the open. Unless we are very fortunate in the weather and other circumstances, unless the pests show great restraint, this will involve us in considerable stock losses.
Just as in the case of grain we have private enterprise buying free and refusing to co-operate with the Minister, we now have the same position in regard to sugar, and I was very interested to see that the Minister admitted that the trade is not "playing ball" with him. Indeed, Lord Lyle, in a recent speech, made it quite obvious that he does not intend to do so, because the first action which Tate and Lyle took was to close their refinery at Greenock so as not to use this sugar and to embarrass the Minister. The Minister, in the defence of the taxpayer, ought to do something about this unrestrained private enterprise which is trying to hold the Chancellor up to ransom.
Now, to turn from the trading figures to the subsidy figures, although I think it is only by about £300,000, once again the agricultural subsidies are up. I notice that it was estimated the other day that, on the average, every farmer in this country received £500 by way of subsidies. I should like to know from the Parliamentary Secretary whether or not that is so. I tried to persuade the Minister yesterday to say what was the proportion of producer subsidies, but the right hon. and gallant Gentleman said that no precise proportion could be determined.
This is something that we must know about, because it is quite clear that the food subsidies are rapidly disappearing, and in this Estimate a high proportion of what are called food subsidies are not subsidies at all, but merely commercial losses. However, in general, in so far as the Minister of Food fails in his purpose of abolishing the food subsidies, I exult; I only commiserate with myself that I have so little to exult about.
I want to ask him a few questions about the food subsidies. I notice that the Minister is asking for £3½ million more for the meat subsidy. [Interruption.] I am dealing with the subsidy, and hon. Gentlemen will see the breakdown of the figures in the reply which the Minister gave to me yesterday. The meat subsidy is now running at more than £43 million. What is to happen? We saw what happened about eggs. What is to happen on the decontrol of meat? The Minister said, last time, "I am asking for more money for meat, but meat is more plentiful than it has ever been before." Why


does not the right hon. and gallant Gentleman look at the figures? We have the figures now for 1953. This is a matter which I have put to the Minister time after time. I said that I would be surprised if he beat the 1950 figure. He has not done so.
The consumption figure for 1953 given in weekly averages was, according to the Government statement, 34,900 tons. What was it for 1950? Not 34,900 tons, but 35,600 tons. Whatever ground there may be for coming forward with a Supplementary Estimate, that is not the ground. As I have indicated, we have consumed less meat throughout the year than the Minister assumed, although, of course, it was more than in the previous year. We aredealing with the assumptions on which the Minister based his Estimate.
I am glad that the milk subsidy is up. It means that the Minister has been wrong in his Estimate, and that rather more milk has been taken than he assumed. Again—this is very cold comfort—we are now consuming less milk than in 1950 and 1951 and very nearly less than in 1949, and that, as the agricultural correspondent of "The Times"has said, with a record milk production. We are rapidly getting back to the position which we had pre-war, of having a Milk Marketing Board whose main function was to dispose of milk through manufacturing channels. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to let us know the price policy for the calendar year. I would like him to announce that there will be no price increase this year.
Now to deal with eggs. The Minister has referred to consumption. We have now the figures for the year, and this is a very appropriate time to hold this debate. According to the figures published by the Government, the consumption of eggs this year has been more than in 1952, but it has been less than in 1951 and considerably, substantially less than in 1950, and less than in 1949. What does the Minister mean when he talks about plenty and abundance? Does he relate himself only to the consumption figures in 1952? Is that what he regards as a standard year? He was talking about his difficulties in December.
I would call his attention to a remarkably interesting figure. The consumption of eggs in December, 1953, was less than it was in December, 1952. I had better

give the Parliamentary Secretary the figure, because his attention has obviously been called to it.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Charles Hill): The hon. Gentleman is giving the figures for December last year and the year before.

Mr. Willey: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I assume now that he does not challenge my figures, because they are figures published by the Government.

Major Lloyd George: The hon. Member must not assume that we do not challenge them. I most definitely do challenge them.

Mr. Willey: Perhaps the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will interrupt me when he challenges the figures. It is essential to get agreement about the facts.

Major Lloyd George: The latest estimate of total production for human consumption, which, I take it, is the best thing we can get, is: for 1950–51, 23,051 thousand boxes of 360 each; for the following year, 22,067 thousand; for 1952–53, 22,561 thousand; andfor 1953–54, 23,647 thousand.

Mr. Willey: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman tell the House whether he has been destroying eggs? Here are the consumption figures published by the Government, given in million dozens: In 1949, 15·81; in1950, 17·77; in 1951, 15·42; in 1952, 15·07; and in 1953, 15·39. Has the Minister been destroying eggs to keep up the price? If there be an explanation and a reconciliation of those two sets of figures, perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary can give it.

Mr. Nabarro: Mr. Nabarro rose—

Mr. Willey: I want to deal with the Minister's account of what has happened. He has concealed some of the factors which have contributed to the situation. We do not know what was the ultimate figure, but the Minister told us that in the summer he took off the market about 60 million home-produced eggs to hold the price. As I explained before, we asked the Danes to oil dip and hold a considerable number of eggs, which were bound to come on to the market sooner or later. As a matter of fact, they embarrassed the Minister when they came back on to the market.
I am glad that the Minister did not rely upon the weather alone, because the weather is relatively unimportant in what has happened about eggs. What has happened is a change in the manner of production, because 35 per cent. now, not 8 per cent., are produced by intensive forms of production. For the benefit of the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) I would point out that the grocers, in theirofficial journal, the "Grocer," complained of
the lamentable fall in the quality of eggs.
Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will deal with that point when he speaks about eggs.

Mr. Nabarro: The hon. Gentleman has quoted endless figures in support of his arguments. Will he deal with one simple fact? Why, if the supply of eggs was so much more abundant under the Administration of the hon. Gentleman, could he not deration eggs? Why is it that under the present arrangements eggs are in abundance and can readily be bought over the counter whereas in the hon. Gentleman's care they could only be bought under the counter or in the black market?

Mr. Willey: We could not deration eggs because the demand was well above the supply, provided that the price was kept within reasonable levels. The demand was for a higher level of supply than we were able to obtain, and although we obtained a high level of supply we could not deration.
What did the Minister do? He had a level of supply higher than pre-war. He disbanded the Eggs Division of the Ministry, and left the matter to the civil servants. They started in September by paying the wholesalers a cash allowance of 2s. 8d., but there was no control over it, so exorbitant profits were made by the wholesalers.
The figures have been given by the Commonwealth Economic Committee. By December, that cash allowance had risen to 20s. 11d. per long 100. In other words, the Minister, who had abolished the subsidy when it was 1d., now pays a cash allowance to wholesalers of 2d. per egg. This is how the right hon. and gallant Gentleman abolished the subsidy. This is what we find when we look at the

report of the Commonwealth Economic Committee—and, of course, the grocers complained bitterly:
Our margins are being cut.
That is normally to be expected when demand slackens—that is not unusual in business—but the wholesalers, who received the cash allowance, increased their margins.
Let us deal now with the egg subsidy. I was the first person to mention in the House the restoration of the egg subsidy. Might I remind the Committee what I said on 10th November last? I said:
"The Minister of Food has not revealed to the House that eggs are being subsidised today. Will he deny it? What a position to be in? The taxpayer is now subsidising eggs, but receives no benefit from cheaper supplies during the rest of the year. Now we have got all the fantastic results of trying to meddle with a free market."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th November, 19S3; Vol. 520, c. 824.]
The Minister did not get up and say, "I repent; I am restoring the egg subsidy." He remained mum. We got the Supplementary Estimate, but nothing was revealed about the egg subsidy—it was hidden under "Miscellaneous."In the debate in December he said that the level of retail prices had been lower than he forecast. He told us that there was a subsidy of £3 million. Two months later he comes here and says, "Oh, it is not £3 million; it is £27 million." What has happened?
The Minister claims to have abolished a subsidy which, in the previous year's Estimates, was £22,200,000. We have endured dear eggs during most of the last calendar year. [HON. MEMBERS"No."] Eggs ran consistently above the controlled price until September of lastyear. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman now says, "I have abolished the £22,200,000 subsidy by imposing on the taxpayer a subsidy of £27 million."
I cannot understand it. I can understand the Minister saying, "I have heard the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North, explain the advantages of the food subsidy; I agree with him and have restored the subsidy."If he did that I would thank him very much and say, "I hope you will properly administer it and not throw it away, beause it is taxpayers' money."I would also ask him to recant all that he said about subsidies, because when he removed the subsidy he


said that he did so because a subsidy which benefited both rich and poor alike is not right. We know from the official figures published in the inter-war years that, on a free market, rich people buy three times as many eggs as do poor people.
What is the Minister going to do? First, will he meet my challenge that there should be a public inquiry into the payment of these cash allowances to the wholesalers? If he does not meet that challenge we shall know that he has far too much to conceal. Secondly, will he—

Mr. William Ross: Resign.

Mr. Willey: —restrict supplies or continue, as a matter of policy, afood subsidy on eggs? If so, we must again have an Eggs Division of the Ministry with proper, experienced personnel to deal with this administration of public funds. We cannot tolerate for another day the muddle and chaos which now surrounds the administration of the Ministry.
Let me now conclude by summing up the grotesque achievements of the Minister of Food. In this financial year he has slashed the food subsidies. He abolished the subsidy on flour and sugar, and is now abolishing that on margarine, cooking fats, butter and cheese. He set out to abolish the subsidy on eggs, but failed. We have had these price increases consequent upon the slashing of the food prices: butter, 4d.; margarine, 2d.; cooking fats and lard, 2d.; sugar, 1d. Eggs, for the most part of the year, were up l¾d. and 2d. This month we are going to have more increases—cheese, a further 2d., and butter a further 4d.
If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had only accepted the advice of his predecessor there would have been an economic stability. As "The Times Annual Financial and Commercial Review" said:
If subsidies have been maintained at their old level there is little doubt that it would have been comparatively easy to restore a more stable wage and price level.

Captain J. A. L. Duncan: What did it cost the ratepayer?

Mr. Willey: I will deal with the cost to the ratepayer.
We have now more price increases envisaged for the summer. Just as we are concluding the present round of wage negotiations the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is going to start it over again.

Mr. Ellis Smith: It is not yet concluded.

Mr. Willey: Indeed, as my hon. Friend tells me, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is going to start it over again before the present negotiations are finished.
We have had a series of measures of decontrol so disastrously conducted that not only has the housewife been having to pay increased prices, but the taxpayer has been made to pay more than he was paying when the year began. The burden has been put on the taxpayer by sheer incompetence, and on the housewife by deliberate Tory policy, at a time when world food prices have been falling for two years.
Let me remind the Committee of some of these essential prices, taking wheat, like for like, first of all. The price in October, 1951, was 2 dollars 40 cents; in October, 1953—the latest available figure—1 dollar 92 cents. Why have we not got cheaper bread? Why has the bread subsidy gone up? What is the explanation? We have been talking about Canadian barley; in October, 1951, the price was 1 dollar 36 cents, and in October 1953, 95 cents. Sugar—Cuban market price—October, 1951, 5 dollars 28 cents; October, 1953, 3 dollars 15 cents. Lard—October, 1951, 19 dollars 50 cents; October, 1953, 19 dollars 17 cents. The free market price for Danish butter in October, 1951, was 772 kroner; in October, 1953, 714 kroner—yet this month butter is to be further increased in price.
To illustrate this argument I will quote tea. This is what happens from decontrol. According to the city editor of one of our newspapers, there was a tea price rise last year—in December, as we were debating these matters—just two months ago—that gave theshares a boost. It was stated "Common tea, for instance, which was selling at 1s. 6d. a lb. a year ago is now around 3s. 6d."What about world prices? The Calcutta price in October, 1951, was 2s. 9½d. a lb.; in October, 1953, it was rather less. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to explain in the


same simple language he used to use—because the hon. Gentleman is expert in explaining things simply—how this has happened.

Sir Herbert Butcher: On a point of order. Is the hon. Member in order in discussing tea, which does not appear to be one of the subjects of debate?

The Temporary Chairman (Major W. J. Anstruther-Gray): I took it that tea might be included in the item "Miscellaneous." It is without my personal knowledge, but I thought it could be and allowed it to be mentioned.

Mr. Willey: I do not wish to take advantage of the position, because it is within my knowledge that tea is not included in the item "Miscellaneous."
I want to deal shortly with the consequences of the crass stupidity and incompetence shown by the Ministry in these measures of decontrol. In his Budget speech, less than a year ago, the Chancellor said:
This reduction"—
that is, the expenditure of the Ministry of Food—
"flows from our policy, which has already been announced, of decontrolling eggs and cereals."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th April, 1953; Vol. 514, c. 43.]
He went on to say that it was, perhaps, fortuitous, but that it would happen this time, at any rate, and we would make this once-for-all profit, which would reduce the call upon the taxpayer.
That has not happened. What is the position? We were told that the demand on the taxpayers would be £220 million, in the form of what were improperly called foodsubsidies. We began the year with a subsidy of £250 million or, to use the words of the Parliamentary Secretary, "in the region of £250 million."We have now a subsidy of well over £300 million, and one which is running at a rate considerably above that.
As a consequence, not of the food subsidy policy—because the food subsidies have been slashed—but of the un-business-like manner in which the Ministry has been operating, we get two remarkable results. First, this country, which is battling on the export market, is having labour costs turned to its dis-

advantage because of food costs being put up as a matter of Tory policy. Prices are going up while they are going down elsewhere. Secondly, there is the further consequence, as a result of the Minister's incompetence, that the taxpayer has gained nothing. He is worse off than when the year began. This is probably the reason the Chancellor had to announce that there would be no Purchase Tax concessions this year.
Mr. Oscar Hobson said that this policy had cracked the Budget. My opinion is that it is bringing it down in ruins. The Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary were once Liberals—a party with a great radical philosophy. They have fallen among the Philistines. Like Samson, eyeless in Gaza, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is struggling to bring down the two pillars—the pillar of price support, on which our industrial peace has rested since the end of the war, and the pillar of price security, upon which the prosperity of our agriculture has depended during the last few years. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman succeeds in bringing down those two pillars he will not only bring down himself and the Government in ruins but seriously endanger the economic future of this country.

4.34 p.m.

Mr. W. F. Deedes: Except for the last few mischievous remarks of the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey), I confess to an unwilling admiration for his dialectical skill in the presentation of his case. From what he said one might suppose that he was comparing abundance for the consumer without any cost to the taxpayer, in October, 1951, with the reverse position today. But, as he well knows, that is not an accurate presentation of the facts. Today, we are considering errors of judgment, and it is very easy, when considering errors of judgment, particularly by Ministries, to be exceedingly wise after the event.
I want to consider the errors of judgment in respect of only one commodity—eggs—about which the hon. Member had a good deal to say in the concluding part of his speech. It is quite true, as the Supplementary Estimate makes clear, that there has been an error of judgment by the Ministry, but there has been an error of judgment on the part of all


those who had anything to say on this subject at the time when eggs were decontrolled. The truth is that nobody—least of all hon. Members opposite—expected that when eggs were decontrolled they would be selling, in this month, at the retail price of 3s. 6d. a dozen. Nobody on the benches opposite predicted that. In fact, they predicted the very opposite.
I have here a cutting from the "Daily Herald" of 27th November, 1952. It bears the headline, "The Shilling Egg?" In fairness, I must say that a question mark accompanies the headline. It goes on to say:
Prices will soar in free market, says ex-Food Minister.
That is a reference not to the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, but to the right hon. Member for Bradford, Central (Mr. Webb). According to the "Daily Herald," the right hon. Member asked the Minister:
Is he just willing to throw this open to the free market where eggs will be 8d., l0d. or even a shilling in the worst period of the year and the ordinary household will not be able to get them?
The cutting also reports that the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton),
as asking for an assurance that the price of an egg would not go up to l0d. in the next 12 months.
I hope that the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton is now satisfied about that.

Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton(Brixton): I am making no more forecasts in future if the only way in which my forecasts can be proved wrong is by the Food Minister spending £28 million on hidden food subsidies.

Mr. Deedes: I thought the hon. and gallant Member might make that point. He suggests that if we add the cost of what the Ministry has spent in subsidy to the price of the egg to the consumer we shall arrive at the l0d. egg. That is quite wrong. The fact is that hon. Members opposite also made an error of judgment. The hon. Member for Sundew-land, North, with great experience of this Department, made an error of judgment. Hon. Members on his side predicted the l0d. egg. That was an error of about 200 per cent.
If one takes the gross figures of the Ministry, the Minister is about £28

million out in respect of eggs. Over his whole trading account that is an error of about 1 per cent. In the whole field that we are discussing todayhe is about £270 million out, which is an error of 10 per cent. While not in any way seeking to mitigate the extent of the error, let us be fair in comparing the various errors of judgment. The Minister was wrong to the extent of 1 per cent. in respect of eggs and 10 per cent. in respect of the whole account, and hon. Members opposite were wrong to the extent of between 200 per cent. and 300 per cent. Even if the subsidy of 11d. per dozen is added to the price of the egg, we still have an error of 200 per cent. in the estimates given on the other side of the Committee.
The truth is that the egg has defied all predictions, on both sides. How very much more fuss there would have been, in particular from the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, if the prediction had gone the other way. Suppose the Minister had not taken the precautions, the bill for which we are now discussing.

Mr. Willey: Surely the position is this, that eggs reached prices at which they could not be sold. We cannot say what price they would have gone to on a free market because the food subsidy was restored. What would have happened under private enterprise would have been what normally has happened in like circumstances before: the eggs would have been destroyed. The Minister could nottolerate destruction of the eggs, and had to ensure that supply met the demand by reintroducing the subsidy.

Mr. Deedes: I think I may safely leave my right hon. and gallant Friend to answer that particular point for himself. What I am saying is that had the prediction gone the other way, if we had under-insured rather than over-insured for a free market, the hon. Gentleman would have had an even more powerful speech to make today, and he would have made it, as he well knows.
It is a pity, but there is an attitude, that needs correcting, among a great many people, not only people with the political point of view of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the Committee, that there has, generally speaking, been a muddle over eggs. I freely admit that that is what a great many people


say. I consider it an extremely unjust point of view to take. What has happened?
The producer has received a floor price from the packing station against consumer resistance which would otherwise have led to a considerable fall in what he received. He would have benefited even more—and here I come down on the side of the hon. Gentleman—if the price of the feedingstuffs and grain had fallen as I think it should have done. I do not in any way seek to defend some merchants who, I think, have not played fair. I hope that when my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary replies to the debate he will say something about this, because I think it is a considerable factor in the present situation.
The consumer, for his part, has received a cheap egg, and in an abundance which, however we may exchange figures—and I noted the figures the hon. Gentleman produced—he has not known for many years. I challenge the hon. Gentleman to suggest that it is not easier to buy eggs in the shops at lower prices now than for a great many years. The taxpayer, on Whose behalf the hon. Gentleman may fairly put a case, has paid a lower subsidy per dozen this year than in the last. He paid about 11d. a dozen as against 11¾d. I am not saying that ¾d. is a very large margin, but the taxpayer has not been wronged to the extent some of the stories circulating about the so-called egg muddle would suggest he has been. So we have the producer, the consumer and the taxpayer, all three of them, no worse off, and one or two a great deal better off, than this time last year.

Mr. Gerald Williams: Yes. Well done.

Mr. Deedes: It is no good going about saying that the egg situation is in a muddle without saying specifically in which category one would make an adjustment. I challenge the hon. Gentleman to say in which of those three categories he would make an adjustment. Is the consumer to pay more for an egg? No, I hardly think so. Are the hens to lay fewer eggs? No, I do not think we need discuss that. Is the farmer to get less? I hope we may hear more about that as the debate goes on. Is the taxpayer to pay less? If the taxpayer is to

pay less it must be at the expense of either the fanner or the consumer. Which?

Mr. Willey: The position of the producer is that he has received more under guarantees—

Mr. Deedes: No.

Mr. Willey: —because during the summer the producers were able to get still more than the guaranteed price. If we are to have a food subsidy it must be properly administered. We cannot have this haphazard, happy-go-lucky cash allowance that we have now, running up at this rate. The point I made about the rate of subsidy was that the housewife has had no protection at all. Until Septembershe had to pay well above the previous controlled price. To bring prices within reason, so that the eggs could be sold, the Minister had to inject the 2d. subsidy. The obvious thing to have done would have been to continue the subsidy. That would have been more satisfactory to the housewife. She would have had eggs at a stable price throughout the year. It would have been better for the taxpayer because the subsidy would have been less than it has turned out to be. It would have been far better for the producer, because the producer has been disturbed and knows that the Minister will not go on paying 2d. an egg.

Mr. Deedes: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me when I say he is trying to have his egg and eat it. He is trying to have it both ways. He knows thatthe February Price Review gives a guarantee 12 months in advance to the producer. It is no use saying at this stage he would make it flexible, or alterable in any way. It is given 12 months in advance. Then there is the price the housewife has to pay. Inthis particular case the housewife paid less, but the producer got what he was guaranteed as the floor price of his eggs. What I am challenging the hon. Gentleman to say is whether he would change. Would he lower the floor price to the producer or increase the retail price to the housewife?

Mr. Willey: I am sorry to interrupt again, but the hon. Gentleman asks me questions and I must reply or they go by default. The Minister had to inject


a 2d. subsidy because demand cannot be affected just by a variation in price, as any grocer will tell the hon. Gentleman. There had to be a dramatic change in price to boost demand. That situation would not have arisen if the subsidy had not been abolished and then reintroduced. We would have had a stable demand throughout the year, and that would have been more satisfactory to the housewife, the taxpayer and the producer.

Mr. Deedes: I am sorry, but I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's argument. However, I am anxious to give others a chance to speak in the debate, and I shall leave that matter where it is.
There is one point I want to make, in conclusion, that I think has been rather overlooked. There are much wider implications in this Estimate than the Minister's miscalculation. This is not only an administrative error. It is part of a major economic situation. In a way I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North did not make more of that and less of the political point we can all make out of an error of £25 million.
I cannot pursue this matter on this Estimate, but this small field serves to focus attention on the consequences of a free market combined with a guaranteed price, for that really is the essence of the error of calculation. I think that I am within the bounds of order in saying that it is no good making too light of this. It is no good making out that this is a situation which is a Ministerial miscalculation, and that is all there is to it. It is the most considerable economic problem in the domestic field today.
I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to give some indication that that is appreciated and that, before another year is out, it will lead to some action. In return for that assurance, I will consider the Supplementary Estimate that we are asked to consider today—tothe tune of £24 million in respect of eggs, and, indeed, the whole of the Estimate—as cheap at the price.

4.50 p.m.

Mrs. Barbara Castle: The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) has made a most thoughtful contribution to this debate. I begin by taking up his perfectly fair challenge to those of us who, when the decontrol

policy for eggs was announced, forecast egg prices rising in times of scarcity to 8d. or 9d.—a figure which I myself quoted. Though in the summer we got near that figure when we had a 7d. and, in some cases, an 8d. egg, it is true that the winter prices, when we thought that scarcity would force them up, have belied our forecast.
The whole point of our argument, however, is that the l0d. or the 1s. egg is implicit in the Government's scheme of egg decontrol. One of the reasons we have this vast Supplementary Estimate is that we have not had the l0d. egg, which the Minister not only estimated that we would have, but which he hoped we would have, because otherwise the Treasury commitment under his scheme became impossible. The hon. Member for Ashford put his finger right on the spot when he said that here we are in a fundamental economic dilemma created by the Government's policy of attempting to link the free market with a guaranteed price.
That policy must give us this kind of impossible situation unless at certain times of the year the market price is to be high enough to reduce the Treasury commitment. I want to add this note to the brilliant speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey). He tore the poor old Minister's clothing into such shreds that there is very little debunking left for any of the rest of us to do. But there is one point I want to make on this question of eggs. What is to be the consequence on the Government's future policy of this Supplementary Estimate and the economic chaos which it reveals?
It is clear that in the last few months in the Ministry we have had the finances of an inebriate lurching fromlamp-post to lamp-post There must be an awful lot of trouble brewing behind the scenes in the Government about how this can be avoided in future. Somebody has been in hot water. Somebody has been told that it must not happen again. The question is what is to take its place. That is what I want to examine now.
I want to make one point clear at the outset, because we have been challenged on it. We on this side of the Committee are not grumbling about the low retail price of eggs. We are not grumbling that the housewife can now buy a 3½d.


egg. We do not complain about the subsidy. We complain that it is unpremeditated. Because it is unpremeditated and because right hon. and hon. Gentlemen have stumbled into it by accident, it is not a secure and integral part of the food consumption policy of the Government.
It is ironical for us in the Opposition to look at this food subsidy situation into which the Government have got themselves. Here we are with food subsidies running for the current year at some £325 million, when certainly it was not the intention of the Government that they should. We welcome food subsidies at this level, but this is virtue by inadvertence. It is doing good by incompetence.
Our minds go back to those days when, as a Labour Government, we were fixing a subsidy ceiling of about £400 million. How we were attacked for misuse of public money. How indiscriminate the food subsidies were said to be because they were benefiting the millionaire as much as the miner. That was one point. Yet the millionaire has been enjoying the 3½d. subsidised egg along with everybody else in the last few months. The second complaint made against our subsidy policy was that it tended to keep down the supply of food because it put suchan Exchequer burden on the Government that they were afraid to see an expansion of supplies. There was talk about how we were not sending the merchant venturers to scour the world for imports; we were accused of being afraid to increase food supplies because that would increase the subsidy burden.
Today eggs are still subsidised to an enormous extent, but the important factor from the point of view of the housewife and the future consumption policy of the country is that the Conservative method is very different from ours. What the Government are doing is to subsidise production and prices that have been completely decontrolled. That is just like pouring water into a bath when one has pulled out the plug and then wondering why it takes such a lot of water to fill the bath.
There are two drawbacks to this Conservative method, one of which has already been touched on by my hon.
Friend the Member for Sunderland, North. It is a matter which is of great importance in a Committee of this kind which is examining with a full sense of responsibility the expenditure of public money. It is, of course, the drawback that this form of subsidy is a form of practically unchecked public expenditure. It is ludicrous that these payments should be made to the packing stations at a time of price decontrol when there can be no effective check on the amounts that ought to be paid.
But in my opinion the greatest draw back to this Conservative method of subsidy by accident is that it carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. If any Conservative Member thinks that he will be able to go to his constituency next weekend and say, "We stand for the cheap egg for the housewife; these Labour people have been complaining that we have been reducing the price of egg…"—

Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear.

Mrs. Castle: Let me place on record the reply to that type of propaganda, in which I am sure the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) needs no instruction from me. We see in this Committee today the shadow of the termination of this era of cheap food, especially cheap eggs, for the simple reason that the whole financial calculations of the Government have been based on the assumption that food would not become so cheap.
We know perfectly well that the Conservative Party always believed that food was too cheap under the Labour Administration. That is why they attacked the food subsidies. To cut food subsidies and to allow the market price of food to rise is a very good way of redistributing income, of taking money from the poor and giving it back to the rich. That is one of the most regressive things that one can do in social legislation.
The Chancellor very clearly revealed the Government's policy on food as recently as 9th November when he was replying in the agricultural debate on that date to the attack made from this side of the House. He said:
The problem I want to put before the House is whether the policy in fact imposes too great a strain upon the Exchequer and the taxpayer


The right hon. Gentleman had his doubts even then. He went on to say: "If that alternative"—
the alternative suggested by this side of the House—
be brought in…namely, continuation of trading by the Ministry of Food with guaranteed fixed forward prices, it must be obvious to all hon. Members that the Exchequer commitments would be totally unlimited because the prices are fixed and the amount sold, is unlimited.
For this reason the Government had adopted the policy of restoring, to some extent, the free market. He explained:
By introducing marketing into this and introducing the deficiency payment with a buttress to the individual, the Exchequer liability is moderated by the introduction of the market price."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1953; Vol. 520, c. 728.]
That means, of course, that it has all the time been the Government's intention that their financial liabilities under the deficiency payments scheme should be restrained by an increase in the market or retail price of food. The Government are deeply distressed to find that, so far as eggs are concerned, the hens have been flushing all the year round instead of restraining themselves in the proper way and allowing the retail price of eggs to go up at the appropriate moment.
I prophesy—and I think that future events will prove it to be a correct prophecy—that at this very moment discussions are going on within the Government behind the scenes as to how this un-Tory-like abundance of cheap food can be stopped. I quite agree that it is impossible for any Chancellor of the Exchequer to be faced with finding money for an unlimited and unregulated commitment to any section of the community. It cannot be done even in the case of consumer subsidies, and, quite clearly, it is intolerable that it should be done in the case of subsidies to the producer when he has been set free from price control and is at liberty to exploit the market whenever scarcity enables him to do so.
Therefore, we must have some form of regulation and control if we are not to have an unrestricted commitment which no Chancellor of the Exchequer can foresee at the beginning of the year and for which the sky is the limit. Of course, the free market would regulate prices if it were really free, but there cannot be a

free market when we have guaranteed prices and producer security in one form or another.
If we had a system of completely unrestricted imports, of complete price decontrol and no guaranteed prices, then, of course, the situation would regulate itself, because if prices fell too low the producer would stop producing and prices would go up again. That is the chaotic state of affairs which existed before the war and on which both parties have turned their backs. When the Parliamentary Secretary used to talk to us about "freeing the egg," he was, of course, talking through the back of his neck. We have not freed the egg, and, if we had, the producers would be the first to howl.
Therefore, the first thing to decide is what form this regulation should take. We do not want the pre-war chaos and all the waste of the unrestricted operation of the price mechanism. The Labour Government had a form of regulation which worked very well. It was regulation through a guaranteed economic price for a planned quantity of production with a graduated subsidy so that the consumer could afford to take up the production which had been planned into existence.
The producers liked the scheme, and it was one which related production to consumption and gave us the basis on which we could expand production. It is the only real basis on which we can get expanding production. The alternative method is the one which the Government are now contemplating as a result of these chaotic financial consequences of their half-and-half policy.
The hon. Member for Ashford was quite right. He was merely letting the cat out of the bag a little early, and he will probably get into trouble with the Whip. The Government are not going on with this policy of giving endless deficiency payments for unplanned production ina decontrolled market. That is not a policy which will work.
What is the regulation which the Government are now planning? It is regulation to force up the market price in order to restrict demand and to reduce the Exchequer liability. The leading article in "The Times"today suggests how this can be done. A few kites are now being flown in certain Conservative quarters to see what the reaction will be.
We could reduce imports and keep out Danish eggs, and thus have a higher price at home. That would reduce Treasury liability. The Government are now going down on their hands and knees and asking egg producers to have a marketing board so that they can control production and reduce supplies. But the producers are doing rather well out of this mixed economy which the Government have created, and they are resisting it.
The Government, however, say that this cannot go on and that something has got to be done. Eggs are too cheap, and they are costing the taxpayers too much. That is too much like Socialism. Iprophesy that as a result of the sad lessons which this Government have learned about economics in the last 12 months, we are about to see a wonderful revolution. The decontrol policy will come full circle very shortly, and will end up with the restriction of output, plus higher prices. We shall get the situation that is inevitable when we have a Conservative Government. We shall have no more eggs eaten than under the Labour Government, but they will be eaten by different people because prices are too high for the poorer consumer. Some people will be eating more and others will eat less.
What, then, is the way out? I am going to give a piece of free economic advice to the Government. They can get out of their dilemma by adopting the policy which we advocated of planned production, with guaranteed prices to the producer, accompanied by controlled prices for the consumer, plus the subsidies required to enable that production to be taken up.
But if the Government are going to continue a policy of decontrol, if they are going to take off price controls so that the producer can reap whatever profit he can get in times of scarcity, getting 8d. for an egg at a certain time of the year, and yet always call on the taxpayer to finance his security when the price has fallen. I suggest there is only one way of giving the producer the security to which he is entitled, and that is to let him finance his own security through a minimum price insurance scheme, such as that to which the egg producers contribute in Holland, Denmark and other countries. In those countries egg producers do not

expect the Exchequer to protect them against the stormy weather of low prices. As long as we have a semi-free market there is no reason why, when the packing stations buy the eggs from the farmer, they should not levy upon those eggs an insurance premium of so much per dozen, and in this way finance a guaranteed minimum price when the price in the market falls too low.
This would be a self-regulating scheme. The producers would control it. They could decide what premium they were willing to pay, according to the level of the guaranteed minimum they wanted to secure in times of abundance. There could, if necessary, be an Exchequer contribution of fixed amount. In that way the producer would have security without expecting to be wet-nursed by the housewife through high prices in periods of scarcity or by the taxpayer in periods of abundance through guaranteed deficiency payments.
It is intolerable to expect the producers to continue to get the best of both worlds at the cost of the rest of us. If this policy we are discussing today continues, if this item is to appear in these Estimates year after year instead of being placed on the shoulders of the producers, we shall get not a policy of expanding output but a planned restriction of production.

5.14 p.m.

Mr. Frederic Harris: I hope the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) will forgive me if I do not follow all her arguments, but I must confess that, summing up what she has said, speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party, she appears to believe that the only way to control this situation and keep food subsidies in hand is by the eventual restoration of rationing. That is something which I do not believe the people would tolerate again unless war circumstances were to arise and make such a thing necessary.

Mrs. Castle: I do not want to make a second speech, but that certainly is not implicit in what I said.

Mr. Harris: There is no time to continue this argument,but if food subsidies are to be controlled at all in present conditions, I should imagine that the only way to do so under the Socialist policy would be by a return to rationing.
I listened carefully to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Food when he explained these items. I think that any reasonable person would agree that he explained the items very soundly. The hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey) had a marvellous time—so much so that I heard the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut. -Colonel Lipton) and the hon. Member for Dart ford (Mr. Dodds) say, "This is really good stuff."No doubt they thought that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North had thought up lots of new arguments, and twists and turns, which they could use possibly on public platforms lo their benefit in some other part of the country. If I may say so to the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, there is nobody more competent to do this than himself because he has had some excellent experience in the past. I remember how some years ago he was busily defending items of this kind when speaking on behalf of the then Government.

Mr. F. Willey: While I was at the Ministry of Food we had only one Supplementary Estimate, which was a formal one for £10. In fact, we made a considerable saving.

Mr. Harris: The hon. Member knows that he had to explain his Estimates from time to time, and one realises when one has been in the House for a few years that people talk differently when they are on one side from the way they talk when they are on the other side. It is surprising how hon. Members opposite are able to defend these Estimates on one occasion and then turn their case round and attack the Estimates when it suits them.
I listened very carefully to whatmy right hon. and gallant Friend said, and I felt that he made an excellent case for putting the Ministry of Food out of business as fast as possible and for letting the trade get on with the job that we Conservatives feel it ought to have, so that we can get back to trading in normal conditions. If there were anything serious to attack in these Estimates there would not be a mere 3 per cent. of the Labour Party on the benches opposite this afternoon.

Mr. George Brown: What about the Government supporters?

Mr. Harris: We do not need to defend our policy. We are satisfied with the explanation that has been given by the Minister. Hon. Members opposite know that if there were any real complaint in this country there would be many more on the Socialist benches to support their argument on an occasion like this. I suggest that this is a question not of administrative competence to which the hon. Member for Sunderland, North referred, but, in the main, of giving support to the producers in this country.
A large proportion of these Estimates relate to payment for stocks of sugar. It is rather misleading to some degree when we have to finance additional stocks on a temporary basis, for people are inclined to think that we are spending more. Of course, all we are doing is temporarily to finance the additional stocks, and the position will be eased later on. The hon. Member for Sunderland, North said that these excess sugar stocks may go wrong. I submit that there is not the slightest need to suppose that any of these Ministry of Food sugar stocks which have had to be held temporarily will go wrong.
There has been considerable discussion on the subject of eggs, about which I would only say this. The people in my constituency, and I am sure the rest of the country, are only too pleased, because they get more eggs at present and they buy them more cheaply, which is what really matters.
I should like to devote a little time to the question of the stocks in the Ministry of Food. I should like the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, with the civil servants in the Ministry, to prune these stocks of theirs and sell them more quickly. I believe there is room for some serious complaint about some of the stocks that they are holding. I refer, for instance, to stocks of canned meat. Nothing is disclosed about them in the Estimates, but I believe I am right in saying that the Ministry have had firm offers from excellent people in the trade who would purchase and distribute the excessive stocks of canned meat whichmay be held at present.
One of the troubles is that we are not getting rid of the Ministry stocks quickly enough, and I suggest that the problem should be tackled without delay. We have seen rumours in the national Press


about our friend Mr. Dawson and what he wants to do. I strongly suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that members of the trade are well able quickly to handle the distribution of excessive stocks now held in the Ministry of Food—and I single out canned meat, in particular. If they cannot be sold in this country because some of the stocks are excessive, why cannot we export them? There are plenty of countries to which the excessive stocks could be exported.
I submit to the House that there may have been a misunderstanding between the Ministry of Food and the War Office about some of these canned meats. It may be that these stocks should be examined quickly and that no further time should 'be lost in disposing of them, particularly as some of them, unfortunately, are slow-moving and some, I believe, are quite excessive.
Contrary to some views which have been put forward by hon. Members opposite this afternoon, I suggest that the reason some of the basic foodstuffs are not selling so heavily these days as they were in the past is that the people in this country have more from which to choose at present. There can be no doubt about that. Hon. Members can go to any of their local traders and find that out for themselves.
Consider the co-operative societies, for example. Hon. Members can see for themselves how much their trade is up today. People are buying more food from the co-operative societies than they have bought for a very long time. That is the case with a large percentage of the co-operative societies in this country. It is no good saying that the sales of certain commodities are down when the total consumption of food is well up. It is a fact that the people have more to choose from today, and I am sure they prefer those conditions to times of restriction and rationing.
As confirmation of the fact that the policy which we have been pursuing is right, I suggest that the attack this afternoon, such as it is, has been mythical. Very few people are interested to take part in the debate. The people of this country are well satisfied with the present food policy, as has been clearly shown in the three by-elections which have taken place in the last week or two. It is all

very well for hon. Members opposite to try to pooh-pooh that, but let them go into any crowd of people in this country and ask whether they prefer the days of rationing or present days when they have more food from which they can choose. Hon. Members opposite know as well as I do what the answer will be, and it is mere rubbish to pretend otherwise.
In conclusion,I believe that the Ministry has done an excellent job and that those in the service have done their utmost. I believe that the present stocks held by the Ministry of Food should be examined, gone through quickly and disposed of through the legitimate channels either in this country or in exports overseas. The sooner the Ministry of Food restores the whole business to private trade, the better for the people of this country.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I can at least agree with the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. F. Harris) in this respect: I am sure that if we asked the people of this country whether they like rationing or not, they would say that they do not like it. On the other hand, I do not know that I can agree with him when he says that this Estimate does not disclose certain rather serious problems, and I would draw his attention to what was said by his hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), who hinted that behind the Estimate there is a considerable dilemma.
I want to address the few remarks which I shall make to the subject of that embarrassing bird, the hen. We have already heard a lot about the hen today, and I think when we look at the extra £24 million which will have to be provided for eggs and egg products, the question which we must ask ourselves is, are we getting value for this money? I agree that no Ministry can estimate exactly in these matters, but I think we must ask not only whether they have made a good shot at what is required, but also whetherwe shall get value for the money. Various metaphors have been used about the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary this afternoon, most of them uncomplimentary. I should say they are certainly skating on very thin ice; and, to change the metaphor, they may fall into very hot water if they do not succeed in abolishing them-


selves before that unhappy event takes place.
The fact is that this is now an agricultural subsidy and not a food subsidy at all. It should therefore be examined from an agricultural point of view. I agree with those who have said there is no magic way of supporting agriculture. Somebody has to pay for it. If we want to support agriculture above the minimum which would be paid for food if we were prepared to go where we could getit at the cheapest prices, then somebody has to pay the extra. It may be the consumer, it may be the taxpayer, but there is no magic way out of the dilemma. I only say that in coming to a conclusion about who is to pay and how he is to pay, we ought to have one or two salient points in mind.
The first is that, in my view at any rate, there are three major parties concerned—consumers, taxpayers and producers. Certainly in my view the consumers are entitled to reasonably cheap food and a reasonable variety of it. No one would seriously suggest going back to the days of rationing, price control and high prices; no one could put that forward in the country today. The consumers' interest is certainly very large.
The taxpayers also have an interest. It hasbeen pointed out that in fact the taxpayers are being asked to pay under the Estimates probably what they would have had to pay under the guaranteed price system. I would say that if it is necessary to subsidise any part of agriculture, then usually I prefer the subsidy to be straight, open and above board, paid by the taxpayer. For one thing, it is not regressive and, for another thing, it can be set on one side and examined. Obviously that has certain advantages.
I turn, next, to the producers, and this is where I am critical of this Estimate and the method used. Producers in agriculture are by no means all of one class. That is a most important point about agriculture. As we all know, land varies. For instance, it varies in its distance from the market.The costs of one producer are inevitably different from the costs of another. The trouble is that all too often producers with many advantages—a lot of capital and good land near to the market—receive the same benefits as poorer and less fortunate people on much worse farms, with less

capital. One object of our policy should be to support the producers who are up against high costs and difficulties but not to give bonuses to the successful farmers on the big farms with a low rent and a lot of capital; and I am not at all sure that the method of payment, for example in the case of eggs, achieves that.
Then, surely any sum which is devoted to the support of agriculture should primarily be directed towards making agriculture more efficient, and, again, I am by no means certain that this will be a result of the present system. The hon. Member for Ashford mentioned the high cost of feedingstuffs. It is true that the costs of egg production are still extremely high, and there is a great deal tobe done by way of co-operation, by way of marketing and the provision of capital which could bring down the costs. I think we have a good deal to learn in that direction from Denmark, and I believe the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department in Scotland could make use of this money, or some of it at any rate, in encouraging experiments in this direction and possibly providing capital for improved methods of production, the provision of batteries, deep-litter, and so on.
The third point is that on the whole we cannot keep prices entirely steady, but so far as the producer is concerned reasonably steady prices are more advantageous to him than wide fluctuations.
I think these are points which we should bear in mind and ask in this debate that the Minister of Food, by next year at any rate, if the Ministry are going to produce Estimates of this order, should see if he cannot find some way of devising a scheme which will enable these sums to be used to make agriculture more efficient as well as giving adequate prices to producers.
I should like to say one or two other things about the present situation as regards eggs. I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) that very large profits are being made by poultry farmers. On the contrary, the people in my constituency are finding it a difficult situation. A woman tells me that she is getting £5 17s. 6d. a case and paying 38s. 6d. a cwt. for layers'mash. My constituency is a difficult one, because it has heavy transport dues, diffi-


culty of climate, and most of the producers are small people. We certainly cannot allow it to go on record that egg producers in this country are making fortunes. That is not true. A great many of them are up against very small profits or losses.
Mr. Nabarro Has the hon. Gentleman worked out what the price of £5 17s. 6d. per case represents per egg? If he will do so quickly, he will find that the amount is a very little under 4d. an egg, which is a very small return, particularly in his part of the country, for producing eggs.

Mr. Grimond: I am afraid that I only got down to the price per dozen in the time that the hon. Member fox Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) got down to the price per egg. He is used to calculating these things and making a little profit, but I am not.
It is certainly true that at the moment there is no question of big profits. If egg production is to stay on a high level in remote areas such as mine, the Government scheme for producers will have to allow a very much bigger margin than is at present available to the farmer. We do not know yet what the Parliamentary Secretary's views are about long-term marketing arrangements for these remote areas and their packing stations. There is a small cash allowance paid for transport, butit nothing like covers the cost of freight. Furthermore, it does not operate, so far as I know, between the packing stations and the market. It operates only between the producer and the packing stations, and even then, not in all areas. In my constituency it is not operating satisfactorily, for instance, in the South Isles of Orkney nor in some Shetland Islands.
I suggest that there is a general problem of the marginal farm and that some attention has to be paid to these extra costs. I think that the Fanners'Union have always demanded that the guarantee should be the guarantee at the farm gate, and I would support that demand. A further point is that there is growing up a considerable difference between prices paid by various packing stations, and I think that it is desirable to have a support price and that, in general, it should operate uniformly throughout the whole country.
I conclude by summarising the points that I have made. This Estimate should be taken out of the hands of the Ministry of Food; it is an agricultural subsidy. We have to make up our minds whether we want to support agriculture for social reasons, defence reasons or whatever it may be, and if we want to do that, we should face up to the implications of it, and put the burden on the taxpayer. It seems to me apparent that what is desirable is to give some extra help to the marginal producer and not to give a further general bonus over the whole of agriculture paid to the big prosperous farmer, as well as to the small fanner and crofter.

5.35 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton(Brixton): This is indeed a doleful occasion, because I do not know whether we are celebrating the imminent demise of the Ministry of Food or not. It seems to me that, in the process of suicide, it is costing thecountry and the taxpayers so much money that some of us are beginning to think that it would probably be cheaper to let the Ministry of Food carry on rather than attend these expensive obsequies.
We are concerned with the Supplementary Estimate which the Government are asking us to approve. We must consider this in the light of the economic situation generally. As the Minister of Food himself said, in the debate that took place on the Gracious Speech, on 10th November, it is a mistake to believe that food questions can be dealt with in isolation from other economic problems. In that respect, he was, of course, saying what was quite true. We are faced with this dilemma, and a dilemma with more than two horns to it. It is a three-pronged dilemma, if such a simile may be applied, affecting the interests of the consumer, the interests of the taxpayer and the interests of the farming community.
Just because the Government have not thought out what they really want to do, we are faced with all these difficulties—Supplementary Estimates and what not. I asked the Minister of Food yesterday whether he would give an assurance that this was the last Supplementary Estimate to which he would ask the Committee to agree before the end of the financial year, and there was no answer. That leads me to believe that there is still


a possibility of further Supplementary Estimates being asked for before the current financial year comes to an end
We are faced with another great difficulty to which reference has been made. We are witnessing the transition from consumer subsidy to agricultural subsidy. If the Ministry of Food disappears, who is going to look after the interests of the consumer if all these food subsidies are being translated, by accident or design, into a form of subsidy for British agriculture? We are not disputing the idea for some form of support prices, and that is why we have been asked to agree to this Supplementary Estimate.
I should have liked to have said something more on the subject of eggs, but that has been very fully discussed already. I have nothing to retract concerning anything which I have said on this subject in this House on previous occasions.
I will deal with what is, I think, a fundamental difficulty which faces the Committee in dealing with this Supplementary Estimate. We do not know anything about the present stocks held by the Ministry of Food. When we ask them how much wheat they hold and how the stocks compare with those of last year, we are told that it would not be in the publicinterest for such information to be disclosed. When we want to know about barley, we are told that we cannot be given information about that. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Food's stocks of barley have been artificially ensured by the unrestricted imports of Canadian barley for dollars during 1953.
The sugar stocks held by the Ministry have been difficult to get rid of because of the 65 million or 70 million dollars spent on Cuban sugar. Had it not been for this substantial dollar expenditure on Canadian barley during 1953 and the 65 million or 75 million dollars worth of Cuban sugar which the Ministry has taken, the stock position would have been very much better than it is today. I am advised by my friends in East Anglia that there are stocks of this year's barley which have not been threshed. What is the use of asking the British farmer to produce more if he is to be faced with that situation? Naturally, he likes a guaranteed price, but he also likes to feel that his product will be sold and not left

to depreciate in stores up and down the country and not held by the Ministry of Food for months, or goodness knows how long, at the expense of the taxpayer.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Then why are we not opposing the Supplementary Estimate?
Lieut.-Colonel Upton:That is a question not for me but for some other hon Members who find themselves in the Committee at the moment.
Because of the lack of information about stocks, it is very difficult to know or to analyse the position as accurately as we would like. There has been a trading deficit on the sale of home-grown grain, and increased stocks are unsold at the end of the financial year. Some 18 per cent. of our harvest of barley was sold, I believe, by the end of January, but I fear that heavy losses will be incurred by the Ministry of Food. We heard the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. F. Harris) not long ago ask the Minister or the Government to get rid of their stocks and so get rid of an undoubted considerable liability.
It is most unfortunate that the Government are not able to say to what extent there can be an apportionment between the subsidies to producers and the subsidies to consumers, which is a vital consideration on which we ought to have information. It makes it extremely difficult to help the Government out of their difficulties if they will not take us into their confidence. If only they told us a little more, they would find themselves in a much less unhappy position.
I hope that this dilemma will soon be resolved. Several kites have been flown. There is the editorial in "The Times"today, which suggests that restriction on imports is perhaps not the right way and that the 1947 Act must be amended. Something has got to be done, because this state of affairs cannot be allowed to go on if it is costing as much as the Supplementary Estimate indicates.
We hope that the Government will make their position clear, because it goes to the very root of our economic future. Are they departing in some way from the 1947 Act, as envisaged in today's editorial in "The Times,"and as envisaged by the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), who spoke a little earlier? The Government must make up their minds on these serious issues before they can


expect the Committee to allow them to come again and ask for these substantial sums, which are evidence that they have not yet thought out what policy they want to pursue.

5.43 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I am anxious to draw attention to three items which appear in the Supplementary Estimate and to say afew words about each of them. First, I should like to deal with the increase of £1,100,000 in the subsidy on potatoes, an increase which is shown as arising from an initial amount provided of £6,200,000, which, with the increase, now goes up to £7,300,000.
We have had an unexpectedly heavy potato crop in all parts of the country. Hon. Members opposite, who criticise so wantonly the amount and the extent of the Supplementary Estimate, neglect the fact that it is a primary factor in the policy of the present Government to assure that an economic return is paid to the primary producer for those staple commodities that are contained within the February Price Review.

Mr. E. G. Gooch: We brought in the principle.

Mr. Nabarro: Of course the hon. Member's party, when in Government, brought it in and we have continued it, but his hon. Friends now accuse us of wanting to scrap the system. In the case of potatoes, as just one example, the Supplementary Estimate arises solely from the fact that the Government are scrupulously abiding by the policy of guaranteeing the price to the producer for the potato crop.
In 1939, we had a potato acreage of 525,000. As a result of food stringency in the war years and the post-war period, the potato acreage has today risen to 990,000 acres. In addition, during this period of 15 years since 1939, the average yield per acre has risen by no less than 10 per cent. The result today is that we have a very large indigenous output of potatoes, and this ata time when the human demand for potatoes is likely to decline. As part of their economic policies, right hon. and hon. Members opposite believe in a basic diet of starch and we on this side believe in a basic

diet of animal protein—in other words, more red meat and not so many potatoes.

Mr. Coldrick(Bristol, North-East): Is it not true that, first, the guaranteed price for potatoes is given to the fanner; then, the farmer sells them at the guaranteed price to the Ministry, and afterwards buysthem back from the Ministry at a much lower price than that at which they were sold to them? In these circumstances, would it not be infinitely better to sell the potatoes cheaper to the producer than to give the farmer the double benefit?

Mr. Nabarro: The answer to everything that the hon. Member says is to be found in the increase of £1,100,000 for potatoes in the Supplementary Estimate, to which I have referred
Surely this is the cardinal point. We are moving towards a situation with potatoes in which the acreage, based on an average yield each year, is substantially above what the total indigenous demand of the United Kingdom can reasonably be expected to be as an aggregate of human consumption and for the diversion of supplies for animal stock feed. The inference, surely, is clear. Before another year has passed we must regulate the acreage under potatoes and try to relate the total supply, based on an average yield, to the total demand.

Mr. Cyril Bence: At what price?

Mr. Nabarro: Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to continue.
We must try to relate the total supply to the total demand. [An Hon. Member: "Planned economy."] I urge upon the Minister the necessity for concluding his negotiations with the National Farmers' Union and with other interests for the resuscitation of the Potatoes Marketing Board. I do not want the Ministry of Food to be in the position, for yet another year, of having to introduce a Supplementary Estimate for potatoes. I want the executive instrument for relating total production to total demand to rest with the producers and associated interests, in the form of a potato marketing board.

Mr. Coldrick: And create scarcity.
Mr. Nabarro: The hon. Member, who is so well versed in co-operative methods,


should recognise the clear analogy which exists between a co-operative retail organisation and a co-operative producer organisation, which is a marketing board.
I pass from potatoes to a very important item in the Supplementary Estimate, namely, sugar. The amount to be provided in the Supplementary Estimate has been increased from £36,600,000 to £50,500,000, an increase of £13,900,000, a considerable sum of money and a large part of this Supplementary Estimate. Hon. Members opposite have tried to make a case that this represents a loss to the taxpayer. Every speaker from the other side of the Committee who has referred to sugar has made that case, but that is totally false. The whole of the sugar is in stock and in serviceable and saleable condition.

Mr. Gooch: Except what the rats have already got.

Mr. Nabarro: Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to continue. I will leave my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with that ratty question.
For the moment, let me repeat emphatically that the whole of this sugar is in stock. Unless there were some drop in world prices of sugar, no loss can be incurred to the taxpayer, except perhaps on account of a minor or local emergency such as would arise from damage to these stocks. How has this Supplementary Estimate arisen? Simply because my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his last Budget conceded the point I put to him on 6th February, 1953. [Interruption.] The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) on that occasion was not in his place.
I urged on my right hon. Friend the desirability of going out into the world markets and, as a temporary and nonrecurring expedient, buying a sufficient tonnage of sugar from any source from which he could obtain it, to enable him to de ration sugar in the United Kingdom. My right hon. Friend, two months later in his Budget speech, showed that he took my advice on this point. [An Hon. Member: "What was the hon. Gentleman's reward."] No reward was attached to it. I applauded my right hon. Friend's decision for doing so, but I now want to emphasise that no part of this Supple-

mentary Estimate for sugar will result in a loss to the taxpayer.
In opening the debate this1 afternoon, my right hon. andgallant Friend drew attention to the very large sugar beet crop this year. I have a special interest in this matter as one of the largest sugar beet factories in the United Kingdom is in Kidderminster. The United Kingdom sugar beet crop this year was 770,000 tons, and the normal estimate for our sugar beet crop is 625,000 tons. The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement has yielded this year—that is, the year covered by the Supplementary Estimate which we are discussing—a figure very much higher than the forecast. It has yielded approximately 2,100,000 tons. In fact, the estimate that was made no more than 12 months ago as to this year's yield was only 1,800,000. Therefore, we have obtained under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement 300,000 more tons of sugar than we anticipated.
Does any hon. Member suggest that we should not honour our obligations to the Commonwealth and buy every single ton of sugar we are under contract to buy, and which Commonwealth countries are anxious to furnish?

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Why Cuban sugar?

Mr. Nabarro: The hon. and gallant Member will keep shouting at me. It will be recalled that I very clearly said that the Cuban sugar represented an exceptional and non-recurring purchase to enable my right hon. Friend to deration sugar.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: It was not necessary.
Mr. Nabarro:The hon. and gallant Gentleman says it was not necessary, but I say that it was because we could not estimate with accuracy 12 months ago what the total yield of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement would be, or the United Kingdom crop. In fact, it has turned out to be 300,000 tons more than we expected from the Commonwealth, and the home crop of sugar beet has turned out to be 150,000 tons more than anticipated, so that we are getting a total of 450,000 tons of sugar more than we expected. That, married to the exceptional and nonrecurring 1 million tons of Cuban sugar at a price—it is quite an open secret—of


between £29 and £30 a ton, gives us the total Supplementary Estimate for sugar.
In that the taxpayer has made a temporary investment, but surely he must bear in mind, first, that we are under contract to buy the whole of the Commonwealth sugar that is available; secondly, that we are under contract to buy from the home producer the whole of the beet that is produced by the Sugar Beet Corporation; and, thirdly, we have satisfied the consumer, for in spite of the abolition of the small consumer subsidy we have given the consumers in this country all the sugar that they want, and still at a very reasonable price.
I will wind up what I have to say about sugar by quoting my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. In a speech which he delivered in this House on 6th February, 1953—and this was two months before sugar was derationed—my right hon. Friend, in a passage which I am going to quote, gave the true answer to the sums of money that are being provided in this Supplementary Estimate for sugar. This is what my right hon. Friend said:
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidder minster himself put to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor"—

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Nabarro: I said I guided the Chancellor—
a question which accepted the fact that to reach the right level to permit of derationing an increase in the first year of 750,000 tons would be required and subsequently 500,000 tons a year. Those figures take into account, quite properly, the fact that when a commodity becomes decontrolled we have to build up further stocks since the demand has necessarily become uncertain and there is a certain wisdom in making larger provision in the first year."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th February, 1953; Vol. 510, c. 2.281.]
That is the reason for the Supplementary Estimate today.
If anyone in the Committee wants to criticise my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Food, the only valid basis of criticism is that he over-insured himself against derationing, and what a wise thing to do, in view of the miserable results that flowed from the policy of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite when they made their abortive attempt to deration sweets. There, sitting on one

of the back benches, is the culprit, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey).
One final word about eggs. In this Supplementary Estimate there is a heavy bill for the taxpayer to pay on their account. It is true, of course, as was observed earlier in this debate, that the hens have had a remarkable flush period this year, in the middle of winter. They have produced an abundance of eggs, but does any hon. Member opposite, including the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Gooch). wish to withdraw the guarantee to producers in order to save sums of money under this Supplementary Estimate? Of course he does not. He knows he is committed as much as I am to guaranteeing prices for staple commodities at each February Price Review.
The hens have laid a large number of eggs this year, and because they have done so there is a big bill for the taxpayer to meet. But the taxpayer also happens to be the consumer, and whereas the taxpayer may have a heavy bill to meet in the form of the subsidies we are considering this afternoon, at least the taxpayer, in his rôle as consumer, can now go into the grocer's shop and buy his eggs over the counter, instead of, as in the days of the Labour Administration, from under the counter. At least my right hon. and gallant Friend, by his policy, has killed the black market in eggs and exterminated the "spiv,"both of which flourished under the policy of right hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. Gooch: I hope the hon. Gentleman does not intend to convey the impression to the Committee that I, as a supporter of the last Labour Government, am departing from the principle of guaranteed prices. He knows very well that I supported the 1947 Act and I stand by it still.

Mr. Nabarro: I hope the hon. Gentle man will manage to persuade and com fort his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton)—

Mr. Gooch: The hon. Gentleman referred to me.

Mr. Nabarro: So far as we are concerned, although the bill is a heavy one this year in the form of this Supplementary Estimate, the consumer has had a


good deal of satisfaction and is continuing to do so. The consumer is happy with the food policy of this Government. I urge my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, for the third successive year, to try to make next year's Estimate for the Ministry of Food his last Estimate. I urge him to do what I urged him to do last year, metaphorically speaking, to cut his throat at the earliest possible moment.

6.1 p.m.

Sir Leslie Plummer: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) will not mind if I do not follow his modest and retiring speech, because time is passing and the Parliamentary Secretary must have as much time as we can afford, for we shall be engrossed by the spectacle of seeing how he can best keep out of that creeping barrage laid down by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey).
I want to raise a somewhat different question from that raised by any of my hon. Friends. I want to bring to the notice of the Committee the fact that under the increased subsidies for meat and livestock and the reduced one for bacon and ham lies a deep injustice to the pig producer. If it is the desire of the Ministry of Food and of the Treasury that our pig production should be curtailed over a long period, that is a point of view which ought to be discussed with the pig farmer in detail. The honest thing to do would be to say, "We asked for the rapid expansion of this industry when we were short of pork and bacon. Thank you for what you have done. We do not want you to go on with it and we shall try to help you to establish yourself in some other direction."This is not what the Government are saying.
The Government are taking a line with the pig producer that is quite reprehensible. I ask hon. Members to remember that the majority of home-produced pigs in this country, either for pork or bacon, are produced on little farms. Two-thirds of our farms are under 50 acres in extent, and it is largely from the small farms that our pigs are produced. How is the pig producer paid today? Last year, the Government altered the basis of payment for pigs by estimating that on 1st April, 1953, the price of feedingstuffs was 33s. 6d. per cwt. and the Government said, "We are freeing from control

cereals and feedingstuffs generally, so the price of pig meat will fall 1d. a score by every 1d. cwt. that the cost of cereals and feedingstuffs falls. The result has been that the price of pigs today is 4s. 3d. a score less than it was in August of last year, and the average receipt that the farmer gets for an eight score seven pound pig, which is a desirable killing weight for bacon, is about £2 less.
This price is predicated on the basis that the price of feedingstuffs generally has fallen pro ratain the manner I have described. However, as the farmer on these small farms has to buy cereals in order to produce the proper grade of pig, he has to go to the merchant because, except for some barley here and there, he cannot grow feedingstuffs himself. He was told by the Government last year that he would be able to buy these feedingstuffs at considerably lower prices and that, while the price he received would also be lower, it would not be lowered to such an extent that it would be worse than the price he had to pay for the feedingstuffs—to make myself clear, the reduction in the price of his product was to be married to the reduction in the cost of feedingstuffs.
Every month this situation is reviewed and a new price fixed. On 8th February the price of pigs was reduced by another 1s. a score on the basis that the cost of the feedingstuffs had dropped from 33s. in August last year to 29s. 3d. today. But it is not so. As a result of giving the control and the handling of feedingstuffs back to the trade, tremendous gambling is going on. In December farmers could buy what the Ministry call wheat offals and what we in East Anglia call "middlings"for £19 10s. a ton. Yet I have here a quotation from an important firm in East Anglia quoting not £19 10s. a ton but £27 8s. 9d., that is, nearly 50 per cent. more than the price last December. The small pig farmer who, because he had neither the capital with which to stock up in feeding stuffs nor the land to grow them, is now entirely dependent on those merchants who are rigging the market in this way.
When I asked my firm why it was that in the course of a few weeks the price of wheat offals had gone up by 50 per cent., the reply was that supplies have become short. Of course, they have, because the market is being rigged all the way up.
Today, when the farmer is supposed to be paying £29 5s. a ton for his feeding-stuffs, I estimate that on today's ruling prices he is paying £31 7s., which is £2 2s. a ton more than the Government are paying him on the basis of the equalisation of prices.
This is not good business. As I have said, if the Government want to drive a man out of pig producing, let them go to him honestly and tell him so, and not disguise the determination of the Treasury and of the Ministry of Food to force him out of business. This Government will have a very bumpy ride with the National Farmers'Union when they face the February Price Review and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will have a very bumpy ride when they go into their constituencies and talk to farmers about the future of agriculture over the next year or so. Indeed, on this issue of treating the pig farmer as badly as I have described, they will have such a bad ride that they will find themselves unseated.

6.10 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Jay: Despite the sketchy and inadequate speech made by the Minister at the beginning of the debate, I hope the Committee will not part with this Estimate before pondering deeply on what it means and what its implication is. For, when all these statistical mysteries have been unravelled, and all party points made, it remains true that we are concerned today with large amounts of public money. There has also been a major failure of budgetary control in this last year; and very far-reaching issues of food and agriculture policy have been brought starkly before the Committee by the Estimate.
Three facts which are beyond dispute emerge from this debate. First of all, astonishing miscalculations have been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of Food. Secondly, the Chancellor's food subsidy policy, as announced in his last two Budget speeches, has gone completely astray. Thirdly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) has just pointed out, the agricultural situation is causing very great anxiety to everybody concerned.
Let us first sum up the conclusions of this debate affecting the actual financial miscalculations. The first, of course,

is in the Trading Services of the Ministry of Food, the main item of which we have been considering this afternoon. The Budget provided originally for a total spending of £96 million. This has now risen in two jumps to £259 million, an increase under one subhead of £163 million. According to my calculation that is an error of 169 per cent.
Secondly, the total of food subsidies, which according to the Chancellor's Budget speech in 1952 were to have a "ceiling" of £250 million, and according to his Budget speech in 1953, only 10 months ago were to stand at a "round figure"—he had become a little more cautious—of £220 million are now shown as having risen already to £325 million a year or 43 per cent. higher than the Chancellor's forecast only last April. For all I know they may go higher. Thirdly, the total of the items in the Supplementary Estimates, after having deducted a small reduction, over and above the 1953—54 Budget, is now as high as £229 million.
How can one justly describe these remarkable mistakes in forecasting? I am reminded of the speech which the present Leader of the House made on 14th March, 1950, when he was describing a Supplementary Estimate for the Ministry of Health. He said that any Minister ought to be given a "very bad mark"for producing any Supplementary Estimate at all, particularly if he made use of the Civil Contingencies Fund, which the Minister of Food has done this year to the tune of £41 million.
The present Lord Privy Seal went on to call the Estimate, which at that time totalled only £148 million, compared with the present £229 million, as "staggering" and he said:
This is a very big hole through which money has been pouring…
We on this occasion are faced with an increase of £163 million under one subhead alone.
The Lord Privy Seal also said on that occasion:
One had hoped—that an intelligent guess would have been within 40 per cent, of the right answer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 921–924.]
But the Trading Service item now asked for is not 40 per cent. but 169 per cent. above the original Estimate, and the food subsidies, as I have said, are 43 per cent. above it.
The first question which we must ask is this: what has been the immediate reason for this year's miscalculation and this extraordinary loss of public money? It is, basically, of course, the conflict between the Chancellor, the Minister of Food and the Minister of Agriculture, and the confusion and the muddle which that conflict has caused—with Mr. Cube also making trouble in the wings.
The Government have abandoned State purchase over most of the field, set up an uncontrolled speculative market, and tried, at the same time, somehow to allay the deepening anxiety of the farmers. They have tried to do that at a time of falling world prices—a point which they attempt to ignore when they take credit for the fact that living costs have not gone up much faster. In addition, they entirely failed to foresee the course of prices during the present year. So unnecessarily large stocks were built up, as the Government admit, and control was abandoned in indecent haste on a falling market. The Minister said today that even with "strict control"it is difficult to get the Estimate right. He thereby admits that by decontrol the Estimates are more likely to go wrong, and money would be lost. I am glad to have the Minister's agreement on that.
The degree of miscalculation can be shown by comparing what the Chancellor said in his Budget speech last year with what the Minister said in this debate and in a debate on earlier Estimates in December. I ask the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) to listen to this in particular, in view of what he said about stocks. The Chancellor said, in April, that the saving he was going to get in cutting food subsidies to £220 million "flows from the policy of decontrolling eggs and cereals."He said that we were to have a great saving on those items. But the Minister now comes forward with an item of about £30 million extra to be sought from the taxpayer on account of eggs alone over and above the Budget Estimate, and a further item of about £56 million extra in the case of cereals.
Yet the Chancellor said in April that
…a large once-for-all reduction has been secured by the receipts expected from sales of Ministry of Food trading stocks of feedings tuffs and other grains Here again the Exchequer benefits from cereal decontrol."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th April, 1953; Vol. 514, c. 43.]

In point of fact, they lost something between £50 million and £60 million by the admission of the Minister, who told us in December that he is
having to take delivery of substantial quantities of home-grown grain offered at the guaranteed minimum prices, and these will have to be disposed of at the ruling market prices.
So very large sums of money have been lost on grain.
As to sugar, to which the hon. Member for Kidderminster referred in particular, the Chancellor took much credit in April for the great budgetary relief that he expected from the end of sugar rationing. But the Minister again told us in December:
I frankly admit that we provided for larger Government stocks than proved necessary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1953; Vol. 521, c. 1174–6.]
That is why we have an additional item of something like £50 million on sugar today. What a staggering failure at forecasting this has turned out to be, and what an extraordinary story of muddle and improvidence!

Mr. Nabarro: The right hon. Gentleman used the phrase "loss to the taxpayer."Would he not agree with my contention that the whole of this £50,500,000 for sugar represents perfectly sound stocks and that therefore it is only an investment?

Mr. Jay: But revenue was being taken into account in other parts of the Estimates for stocks of commodity sold during the same period, and the Chancellor claimed credit in the Budget for a once-for-all release of stocks. Therefore, the hon. Member cannot take one item and say that it represents an investment which has been built up.
What really is the underlying cause of the confusion in which the Government now find themselves? I believe that it is mainly the fact that all three Ministers have been pulling in different directions. The Chancellor set out to save money. The Minister of Food set out with madcap doctrinaire haste to decontrol everything and abolish his Ministry in a few months, egged on by the unwisdom of hon. Members opposite. I think that "egged"is the appropriate word in which to refer to the hon. Member for


Kidderminster. And the Minister of Agriculture, of course, has been tagging along timidly behind, trying rather ineffectively to honour the 1947 Act guarantees to the farmers.
What I want to emphasise is this. It is impossible to do all three things at once. We cannot save public money, decontrol the food trades, and maintain guaranteed prices and assured markets. If we try when world prices are falling, the confusion is all the greater. In the event, unluckily for the nation as I believe, the Minister of Food has come nearest to winning this undignified squabble. The farmers are being left in the lurch. The Chancellor has completely lost control of expenditure, and been made to look exceedingly foolish.
Let us at least hope that the Government will now understand, what most people understood before, that if one tries to perform the impossible, one gets landed in a state of confusion. What does the Minister of Food think he is achieving by re-establishing these speculative markets? Take two examples. In the case, for instance, of the uncontrolled meat auction markets, which he is so proudly re-establishing, all experienced farmers tell us that trade rings will beat down the prices. In that case the farmer will recoup himself at the expense of the taxpayer, while the middleman's rings will be profiting out of public money.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. George Thomas): We are confining ourselves to Class VIII and the question of meat does not arise here.

Mr. Jay: I think it will be found that meat is mentioned, but in any case I only referred to it as an illustration.
Secondly, I do hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give us the answer asked for by my hon. Friend about the speculative market in grain. We have had the very disturbing statement by the agricultural correspondent of "The Times,"that the millers are boasting how they are going to talk prices down, and put both the Government and farmers in a difficulty. The agricultural correspondent of "The Times" said this yesterday:
Such irresponsible talk should stop if the grain trade does not want to jeopardise the market guarantee for the 1954 crops.

But how do the Government propose to stop these things happening, which, otherwise, are bound to result in further loss of public money?
I ask the Committee to note, in particular, the long-term lesson of all this for food subsidy policy. We in the Labour Government maintained the subsidies not only for the sake of social justice—important as that was—but for three other reasons. The first was because they helped to maintain stability in wages and prices, and so greatly assisted the export trade when world prices were rising. Secondly, we were convinced that if the subsidies were heavily reduced, other forms of Government expenditure would rise by a very similar amount or more. Thirdly, we understood very well—as hon. Members have said today—that the greater part of the subsidies were paid on account of home-produced food, and were the price of preserving ahealthy and thriving agriculture in these islands.
In the 1952 Budget the Chancellor despised these arguments, and launched his reckless experiment of cutting food subsidies. He has now discovered, as we can see by the figures, that all three of those arguments have turned out to be valid. His attempt upset wage, price and dividend stability, and gravely injured our exports over the last two years. Secondly, it has not even saved public money in the narrower sense. In his Budget speech of 1952 the Chancellor added £80 million to social service expenditure to set off against the proposed £160 million cut in the subsidies. But, if we add that £80 million to the £325 million at which the subsidies are actually running now, we get back to £405 million, or practically to the 1951 subsidy total—without allowing for all the increase in Government expenditure in wages and salaries right through the Civil Service and other parts of the public services, due indirectly to subsidy cuts.
On balance, therefore, there can be little doubt that a net increase, and not a decrease, of public expenditure has resulted from the original decision of the Chancellor on subsidies. I hope hon. Members opposite will ponder on the figures if they seriously doubt that. We used the subsidy money deliberately for keeping down the price of certain carefully selected foods for social and human reasons, and as part of a general policy


of stability affecting wages and dividends as well as food prices. The present Government pour it out, contrary to their own avowed intents, without any plan, and without any agreed policy for industrial stability.
Thirdly, Ministers have at last discovered that most of the money—I believe now something like 90 per cent.—is spent on account of home-produced food. As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) rightly said, they are really misnamed "food subsidies."They cannot be cut down beyond a point without grave injury to home food production. All the Government have done, after all this disturbance of the industrial scene, and after impugning the political veracity of Lord Woolton and the Chancellor, is to change the name from food to agricultural subsidies.
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us what the Government propose to do next, because the House of Commons is really entitled to ask. Will the subsidies continue to run at £325 million in the next Budget, as they are shown in the paper that is before us today? Or will the Minister of Agriculture finally admit defeat and, as "The Times"hinted this morning, abandon altogether the 1947 Act guarantees? Will the Chancellor openly admit that his intended savings cannot be made? Or last, but not least, will the Minister of Food abandon his disastrous, doctrinaire and reckless efforts to decontrol, and resign here and now in the interests of the country? While expressing no personal preference between one Minister and another, I must admit to a fervent hope that for the sakeof the nation, the farmer, the taxpayer and the housewife it is the Minister of Food who will go.
I would add this, especially addressed to hon. Members opposite. I do hope that they will note the effect of this Estimate on Budget expenditure as a whole this year. I think they have still not noticed that. In the last full financial year of the Labour Government the total Budget expenditure, above and below the line, amounted to about £3,800 million. The Chancellor's estimate for the present year, this was last April, was £4,955 million. But in the present Supplementary Estimate even if we allow for possible hitherto unrevealed savings of £100 million on other Votes—which is sometimes possible

—this total spending has been raised by the Vote we are considering today to well over £5,000 million.
I wonder how many hon. Members opposite, supporters of the Government, realise that their Government are now spending £1,200 million more than the Labour Government did in their last full budgetary year? That excess is about equal to the whole Budget in 1938. In the debate on 14th March, 1950, the Lord Privy Seal said:
We are certain that expenditure must be reduced in order that taxes can be reduced."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 926–7.]
But total expenditure is now £1,200 million higher.
The Temporary Chairman:Order. The right hon. Gentleman really must confine himself to the £35 million Supplementary Estimate which is now before the Committee.

Mr. Jay: I am certainly glad to do so, Mr. Thomas. I was considering the effects of that on the budgetary picture for the present year.
I will conclude by saying that in July, 1951, the Prime Minister said that "no Government in history has spent money so recklessly."The mistakes before us this afternoon, however, is not 30 per cent., but 169 per cent. and the total of public expenditure has risen from £4,000 million to £5,000 million. I can therefore best conclude by quoting two other sentences from the eloquent speech of the present Leader of the House in March, 1950. He said:
These Supplementary Estimates are a condemnation of the administration of the Chancellor….He stands condemned, and…we deplore his failure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 926–7.]

6.31 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Charles Hill): We have gone some way in our journeying through the field of Estimates—and outside it—since the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) made his forceful speech, upon which I congratulate him. I say that as a regular adversary of his night after night. But that speech contained the usual general admixture of inaccuracies with which his speeches are customarily studded.
The hon. Gentleman began by saying that he was referring to the period be-


tween when the Supplementary Estimates were discussed in December, and today. He suggested that there had been no new features; no increase in the production of eggs in December; no abnormally high production of eggs in January; no new calculations as to the yield of the home beet industries—calculations which could not have been made before the date of the Supplementary Estimates. Yes, he began with a generality, that he hoped we shall show where the extra expenditure has been incurred between the last Supplementary Estimate and this.
The hon. Gentleman began, as he so often does, in a mild, interrogatory way, by asking what happened to potatoes—that was his particular question. My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), with that unerring touch of modesty which he brings to the examination of these problems—[HON. MEMBERS"Oh."]—well,perhaps with a mixture of diffidence and modesty, dealt with this point in general—as did the hon. Gentleman. He referred to the really surprising increased yield per acre which has resulted, despite a fall in acreage, and with the surplus this year which may be about 1 million tons, compared with rather less than half of that figure a year before.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, North referred to the grain trade with a mixture of doubt and anxiety as to what would be the attitude of the miller in this matter of the purchase of home-produced cereals. I wish to deal with that point because I consider it of great importance. In pre-war years, out of, the 1,650,000 tons of home production, the millers took rather less than half, about 730,000 tons. This year, out of a production of 2,664,000 tons, the millers are taking 1,125,000 tons, a similar proportion.
It is all too easy publicly to criticise such trades as the grain trade and the millers—I am dealing with the criticism and ignoring, for the moment, its origin. It is all too easy to throw about these loose criticisms, but, as a matter of fact, the grain trade and the millers have cooperated magnificently to secure that the home production is taken up. There is no ground for the rumour that they will not be taking the proper proportion of home grains next year.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, North did his best with sugar. He objected to the Cuban sugar purchase. Of course he did—it enabled derationing to take place. He disliked this accumulation of stocks. With his mathematical acumen, he might have calculated what had happened to the average price paid for that Cuban sugar as a result of a higher proportion of it being taken before the end of last year. He would have found, because of the fact that we took more before the end of the year, that the price fell from 2·864 cents to 2·817 cents.
Bearing in mind that the world price today is in the region of 3·40 cents, I should have thought that, with his genius for economy, the hon. Gentleman would have congratulated the Government on having bought this supply of sugar which enabled us to end sugar rationing for good and all, and, at the same time, to hold substantial reserves of sugar. How hon. Members opposite seem to dislike the idea of these powerful stocks which are being held.
Then the hon. Member wandered on to the bread subsidy. He said that had gone up, with the price of cereals going down. As a matter of fact, the bread subsidy has gone down—as he would have seen had he examined the accounts—so that seems to dispose of that part of his argument.

Mr. Willey: I do not want to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's fun, but the question I would like him to deal with is the prospect regarding the bread subsidy.

Dr. Hill: I am dealing with the arguments put forward by the hon. Gentle man, and if he makes an allegation—
The Temporary Chairman:Order. The hon. Gentleman will be unable to pursue that argument. Prospects are one thing: what happened up to 31st March is another, and that is what we are now discussing.

Dr. Hill: Well, up to 31st March the estimate is that the bread subsidy will be down.

Mr. Jay: Are we to understand that the Government's action up to 31st March took no account of any prospectof what would happen afterwards?

Dr. Hill: Clever, but relatively unimportant.


Then we have the old story of 1950. How the hon. Member for Sunderland, North loves to quote 1950 in his comparative figures of food consumption. Of course he does. The party opposite raided stocks in 1950—160,000 tons of meat were taken from stock; the cheese stocks were substantially down at the end of the year. And while we are on the subject of meat, why does not he carry the comparison on into the beginning of next year, when the carcass meat ration—because of this raiding of stocks—was down to 8d.?
To come to eggs, 1950 was a good year. There was a heavy flush. What did the Labour Party do? Quite properly, they reduced the retail price in order toget rid of the eggs, and they incurred a very substantial addition to the subsidy in so doing. What was good enough for the Labour Party in 1950 now apparently becomes evil when it is done in the presence of a bigger flush.
The hon. Gentleman seemed to besaying, or giving the impression—I do not believe he intended to say it—that the 2d. which went to wholesalers was for the purpose of the wholesalers. He may have been hurrying over his ground. Nevertheless, he spoke of 2d. per egg being handed out to the wholesalers. That is a grossly unfair statement to make. I will deal with the question of the margin, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has been watching it.
The margin on eggs is about 1d. per egg. The retailers' margin is ½d. The packing station margin in respect of collecting, testing and packing eggs and transporting them to the wholesalers is ·22d. per egg. That is the figure. Indeed, the profit element in the calculation is ·025d. To come to the next margins, the transport to the wholesalers represents ·13d. and the wholesalers' margin is ·15d. That is the story of the margin which in the aggregate from farm to consumer amounts to 1d. per egg.
What the hon. Gentleman had in mind, of course, but didnot make clear, was that we are using the packing stations to fill in the gap between the support price and the price at which the packing stations are having to sell the eggs in order to dispose of them. In other words, it is not 2d., the figure given by the hon. Gentleman, with the customary inaccur-

acy which passes for him, but l¾d., and that is the subsidy element which is being paid through the medium of the packing stations. But that sum of money is in no sense held by the packing stations or the wholesalers, and it was utterly misleading for him to give the impression that there was this wholesalers' rake-off in the matter of eggs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. F. Harris) referred to stocks. "Sell them fast," he said. Let me tell him that we are, of course, seeking to dispose of our stocks, but we must do it wisely. We must do it through the recognised channels of trade. We must avoid a situation in which we overhang, and so destroy, the market. I can tell him that we are proceeding in the case of canned meat, which he quoted. I do not think it will be long before he will hear of the successful disposal of the stores of canned meat.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) made his usual constructive speech. I will not pursue the line of general agricultural policy, but I wish to refer to the practical point which he raised affecting his own constituency. We have now made an arrangement with the shippers of the eggs which completely bridges the gap betwen the packing stations in the islands and the selling price at Leith. I admit that the problem still remains for those who have to take their own eggs to the packing stations, being outside the region of collection, but I hope he will regard this as at leasta token of our appreciation of the difficulties there.
The hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) said that this was a doleful occasion. It has been a doleful occasion for the Opposition, for the situation we are now in is associated with a substantial fall in the price of everything and an enormous increase in the quantity available to the community and being purchased by the housewives. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that he had nothing to retract of his previous utterances—nothing at all. On Wednesday, 26th November, 1952, on Question No. 4, the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked:
Can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman give a categorical assurance that the price of an egg will not go up to l0d. with in the next 12 months, as I forecast last week when


I put that figure to him?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November, 1952; Vol. 508, c. 435–6.]
Nothing to withdraw!
I really wondered what the hon. and gallant Gentleman was advocating in the latter part of his speech. I wondered whether he was advocating a limitation of imports. He was light and indefinite in his touch, but it seemed to me that he was suggesting as an easy solution to the problem that we should deny ourselves the opportunity of buying in the world and should adopt a policy of restriction of imports and the creation of artificial scarcity for the purpose of raising the home price.
The hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) might have reminded himself of a former incursion or gambit of his in an egg debate, when he denounced with great vigour the "wicked practice"then obtaining of selling imported eggs at a profit. He might at least have recognised that £5 million of the amount due in respect of eggs is accounted for by the reverse process, that of selling imported eggs at a loss. He might at least have found a little credit for Her Majesty's Government in that, but he preferred to raise a matter which is not unimportant but which falls to be dealt with at the Price Review rather than across the Floor of the Committee at this time.
I now come to the question of eggs generally. After all, for all the discursive character of the debate and for all the Finance Bill speeches to which we have listened, it is a fact that the Supplementary Estimate isdue to two factors, eggs and sugar. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North did his best, of course, to run around in all possible directions except this one. He sniffed at the While Paper, paragraph by paragraph, like a terrier on an afternoon's walk. But at last he came to eggs.
Let us look at the egg situation. It has been suggested—I shall come to some of the observations of the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle) in a moment—that this reduction in prices isnot real. In opening the debate, my right hon. and gallant Friend referred to a calculation of what it would have cost under the old system of control. I want to look at that matter for a moment. If we take the third week of February last
year and this year, we were, last year, paying the producers 5s. per dozen, and this year the support price is 3s. 9d.
As my right hon. and gallant Friend asked, what would the Labour Party or any Government administering the old scheme have done when confronted with this unexpectedly rich supply of eggs? Would they have reduced the price? Of course they would have had to reduce the price to the level necessary to enable them to sell the eggs, which is the price at present obtaining in the market. I could not understand the right hon. Gentleman when he failed to see that it is the market price which is obtaining today. It is the price which is necessary to get rid of the eggs.
If the Labour Party, in such circumstances, had not reduced the price to the present level, they would not have got rid of the eggs. If, on the other hand, they had not reduced the price to the present level, they would have been denying consumers a fall in price to which they were entitled, and, at the same time, running the risk that supplies of unsold eggs would be wasted by reason of their going bad.
So it seems to me that this situation of a surplus not wholly expected, if I may understate the position, was due to a number of factors, and that it is anybody's guess which is the most important, though I would add that I myself believe that deep litter methods have played a very big part in it. Confronted with that situation, the result had to be that the retail price would fall. Imports played their part as well, and there was a suggestion in one speech today that this freeing of imports was a factor in it. I do not think the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North himself made the point, but it is interesting to note that the proportion of imports to total supplies before the war was 33 per cent. and the proportion now is 23 per cent. In fact, if hon. Gentlemen opposite study the period since 1950, they will find that imports of eggs today are substantially less than they were in 1950.
I want to bring these arguments closer together. The difference between the price paid to the producer and the price paid by the consumer, after allowing for distributing costs, represents the trading loss, which is the subject of this Supplementary Estimate, and those who argue


that this is a wasteful expenditure of money should tell us what their solution is. Would it be to lower the price to the producer? I should say not, but it is one way. Would it be to raise the price to the consumer? That is another way. Or would it be a continuance of their present policy of adducing no effective arguments but talking vaguely and suggesting that it is the distributors' margins which is responsible. It is up to hon. Gentlemen to say, in fact, what they would do.
We are committed to the policy of the Agriculture Act of 1947, and we are facing up to the cost and implications of that Act. The party opposite are flirting with such notions as are put forward by the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East and by the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. S. N. Evans), while their own Front Bench adopts a respectable attitude of continued support for the Agriculture Act, 1947, very content that the rebels on the fringe should use arguments which are based on a departure from that Act.

Mrs. Castle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, in "The Times"today there is a leading article which advocates the abandonment of the 1947 Act?

Dr. Hill: It is good to see the hon. Lady in respectable company.
It has been alleged today, and not without some justification, that there has been an error in forecasting, and the hon. Lady was generous enough to refer to her own error in forecasting. She used that argument to explain things away, and she said that expensive eggs were implicit in the control scheme. Well, the retail price today of the best eggs is 3¼d., plus the subsidy l¾d., which makes 5d. in all. I do not know whether that justifies her policy or her argument, because she went on to use another argument.
The hon. Lady seemed to suggest that this was due to what I might call a lucky or lonely virtue of inadvertence. What an argument to use with which to explain the fact that the hon. Lady herself, her right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, Central (Mr. Webb) and other hon. Gentlemen opposite told the world about the 8d., 9d. and even l0d, egg. The hon. Lady also talked about the

harshness of the Chancellor in deliberately introducing this device to protect the Exchequer.
The fact is that all the forecasts of the party opposite about expensive eggs and scarce eggs, as well as their whole argument, came unstuck, and they are now confronted with and embarrassed by an effective contribution to the steadying of the cost of living, which they still do their best to deny. They are confronted with the failure of their own forecasting, and only the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East among them has had the grace to refer to her failure as a prophetess in this field.
The Supplementary Estimate is due to the difference between the price given to the producer and the price paid by the consumer. When we face that fact, the argument becomes one of reality. To those who say that the margin is too great, I would say, "Let them stand up and say whether it is the producer's price which they would lower or the consumer's price which they would raise."But for this subsidy, the loss would have fallen on the producer. I will not engage in a verbal exchange of a dictionary character with the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, because I know that his acquaintance with such volumes is greater than mine, but this difference, this trading loss, which is the subsidy, is due either to producers being paid too much or consumers being charged too little.
I invite hon. Gentlemen opposite to make up their minds which of those solutions they would follow, and, at the same time, face the fact that, unfortunate though this Supplementary Estimate, like every other Supplementary Estimate is, it derives from circumstances which have redounded to the satisfaction of the consumer and to the discomfiture of the party opposite.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £35,334,900, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Food; the cost of trading services including certain subsidies; a grant in aid; and sundry other services, including certain expenses in connection with civil defence.

Orders of the Day — CLASS VIII

VOTE 1. MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £4,810,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, including grants, grants in aid and expenses in respect of agricultural education and research; services in connection with livestock; land settlement; land drainage; purchase, adaptation, development and management of land; agricultural credits and marketing; the guarantee of a minimum price for home-produced wool; the prevention of food infestation; agricultural training and settlement schemes; fishery organisation, research and development; and sundry other services.

VOTE 2. MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (FOOD PRODUCTION SERVICES)

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £3,880,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for certain food production services of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Orders of the Day — CLASS VI

VOTE 10. MINISTRY OF SUPPLY

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £10, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Supply for the administration of Supply (including research and development, inspection, storage, disposal and capital and ancillary services related thereto); for the

supply of atomic energy and radioactive substances; for administrative services in connection with the iron and steel, non-ferrous and light metals and engineering industries; and for miscellaneous services.

Orders of the Day — CLASS II

VOTE 1. FOREIGN SERVICE

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £10, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for the salaries and expenses of the Department of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, including Her Majesty's Missions and Consulates abroad, and the salary of two Ministers of State.

Orders of the Day — VOTE 5. UNITED NATIONS

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £150,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for grants in aid of expenses of the United Nations and of technical assistance for economic development.

Orders of the Day — VOTE 2. FOREIGN OFFICE GRANTS AND SERVICES

Resolved,

That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £7,328,580, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954, for sundry grants and services connected with Her Majesty's Foreign Service, including grants in aid.

It being Seven o'Clock, The Chairman left the Chair, further Proceeding standing postponed until after the consideration of Private Business set down by direction of The Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business).

Orders of the Day — ASHRIDGE (BONAR LAW MEMORIAL) TRUST BILL (By Order)

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

7.1 p.m.

Mr. George Wigg (Dudley): Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) rose—

Mr. Stephen Swingler: On a point of order. May I ask your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on a point of procedure? We have before us a Bill which is extremely complicated and lengthy, and which deals with a college which has apparently been bankrupted under the authority of the Conservative Party. It is now desired to build it into a college which would be eligible for grants from public funds.
Before the House considers the Bill, it seems to me that we should have some explanation of its long Clauses. Could you therefore ask the Treasury Bench whether we could have a speech to propose the Bill and to explain its Clauses and Schedules to us? It is a complicated matter, and we ought to have an explanation before we attempt to deal with the main issues and with the Amendments that have been put down.

Mr. Speaker: The Bill has been set down for Second Reading at this moment, and it is in order in the way it has been moved. Any speeches of the nature that the hon. Gentleman desires must come later.

Mr. Wigg: I share the astonishment of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme(Mr. Swingler) that there is no spokesman of the Conservative Party here tonight to explain this Measure. The Chairman of Ways and Means has done his duty and has formally moved the Second Reading. I am grateful to him. The power to determine the order ofbusiness is vested in him under Standing Order No. 174, and had he not put the Bill down first my hon. Friends and myself would have been somewhat inconvenienced; so I make no complaint about the Ashridge Trust Bill coming up for Second Reading now. I am very glad of it.
Yesterday afternoon, when the right hon. Gentleman gave notice of his intention to put down eight Private Bills for Second Reading tonight, my first business was to seek out an hon. Gentleman who sits below the Gangway, the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). I gave him formal notice that I should refer to him this evening and I subsequently wrote in confirmation of that fact. One of the great authorities in this House—if we are to accept what the hon. Gentleman says of himself—is the hon. Member for Croydon, East. His influence on almost every opposed Private Bill which has come before the House over the last 20 years has been apparent. His great influence does not stop there, but has been brought to bear upon almost every Private Bill which has been brought to the House.
I should be trespassing on your generosity, Mr. Speaker, if I referred in any great detail at this stage to the activities of the hon. Member for Croydon, East. Later tonight, if we pass from this stage and, in your kindness, you call the Instruction which is on the Order Paper in my name, I may refer to those activities in greater detail. I must confine myself now to what is in the Bill.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme says, Ashridge has for many years been a bankrupt Conservative college. It was established to the memory of a great statesman. I speak well of the dead and I will not say anything about him. It has come to be called "The Bonar Law College."It was endowed with a considerable sum of money, and a board of governors was set up who were certainly inspired by the Conservative Party.
I will not weary hon. Members by reading the particulars which are set out in the Preamble to the Bill. The influence was there. One has only to point out that two governors were to be appointed by the Executive Committee of the National Union of Conservative Associations and that two ex officio governors were to consist of the Leader and the Chairman of the Conservative Party.
The subjects to be taught were economics, political and social science and political history, with special reference to the development of the British constitution for those who wanted to see an


educated democracy. There was also provision that persons should be trained to become lecturers, speakers, writers and workers with a view to furthering the objects which I have just read out, and which are all tied up with the memorial to the late Mr. Bonar Law and with the furtherance of the interests of the Conservative Party.
The House is asked today to take this bankrupt Conservative concern, which has now exhausted its usefulness as a piece of propaganda machinery for the Tory Party, and to turn it into an educational trust where the same group of subjects will be studied as was studied in the past. It is true that the governors are now to foe chosen from a group of distinguished men from all branches of public life and that one of the new governors is a supporter of the Labour Party.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Who is he?

Mr. Wigg: Viscount Jowitt, who has become a member of the governing body which will be responsible for the future administration of the college. When the college was a purely Conservative institution there was a condition that it should concern itself with the training of persons to become lecturers, speakers, writers and workers, but that has been dropped and a Clause has taken its place to which I take exception. I would very much like to hear some prominent Member speak on behalf of the Conservative Party on this point.
The Clause lays down that in the education given in the college there shall be a rigid exclusion of teaching calculated to support the politics of any political party, and that the general aim shall be to provide education free from bias relating to party politics. In other words, it is on the insertion of that Clause that the Conservative Party hope to rest their case that the future usefulness of Ash-ridge College shall now be on a non-party basis, and from an unbiased angle.
I am extremely suspicious of people, whether they are members of the Church or speakers on the B.B.C., who say that they are without bias. I am biased from the tips of my toes to the utmost hair on my head, and I am proud of the bias. I never attempt to conceal the bias. I

say that all the noble minds who have made a contribution to adult education in this country have been the first to declare that they were biased. The great adult education lecturers, like Lord Lindsay and the late Archbishop of Canterbury, were men who admitted their bias and were conscious of it and, having admitted it and being conscious of it, honestly set out to conceal it. I have time and again discussed with students the political leanings of their lecturers, and have sometimes discovered that teachers with leanings towards the Labour Party have covered up their bias so well that the students thought their bias was in the opposite direction.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Would the hon. Member ask his right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) to support it?

Mr. Wigg: The right hon. Gentleman will make his own speech if he wishes.
Although I understand the reasons which have prompted those responsible for the Bill putting in this Clause, it is a weakening and enervating and not a strengthening provision. I am one of those who want to see controversy and virile argument. I am a disciple of the late Lord Lindsay. He always held that the glory of British democracy was to be found in the power of our discussions, which were carried on temperately and without the wish to do physical violence. What we have done in the last 300 years, in moments of great national crisis, has been to turn ourselves into a great discussion group. Only by such methods does one get an understanding of the issues of our times, and without understanding one cannot get reasonable and responsible action.
We must therefore be extremely cautious—and must certainly keep an eye on Ashridge College—with people who have had very strong political bias in the past, as they admit, and have had vast funds at their disposal which have now been run down to the point at which the college, as it were, has had to take in lodgers. Half the buildings are given over to a young ladies'educational establishment, called, I believe, the House of Citizenship. That is an excellent thing. But the Conservative Party has now brought this establishment to the edge of bankruptcy. The Conservative Party, of


course, has got something in exchange. It has a temporary majority. A great deal of the work in the propaganda field has had its origin at Ashridge.
To be frank, I should not have discovered the merits and demerits of this Bill if I had not, for some months, been engaged in thwarting the hon. Memberfor Croydon, East. Where his interests went I followed him. I felt this to be a proper subject for study, and although we regret the hon. Gentleman's absence on this occasion, I am grateful to him—and the House and the country ought to be grateful to him—because we want to make quite sure that adult education is being enriched. We want to be sure that the British public is not buying a pig-in-the-poke, and that public money is not to be poured into Ashridge so that, at the second stage, another propaganda machine comes forth, this time not under the banner of a Conservative Party, but in the guise of independence and lack of bias.
I have made my protest and drawn attention to what existed in the past and what is now proposed, and I hope that my hon. Friends will not press this to a Division. But this experiment should be watched to see that it is not abused under this new guise of independence. We know what Tory independence means, and that one of their famous devices is to discover new alibisfor themselves. We should give an opportunity to those responsible to live up to what they profess to be. On the other hand, we must watch that public money is not to be used as a means of supporting and furthering the interests of the Conservative Party.

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Stephen Swingier: There are a number of very serious issues which the House should consider in dealing with this Bill. It is indeed very surprising that no hon. Members on the other side of the House have seen fit to make themselves acquainted with the issues involved so as to present the Bill in a proper way. That is emphasised by the fact that the first matter which the House is compelled to discuss tonight is whether or not it is desirable for the Conservative Party to have an educational college, because this Bill deals, in the first place, with a college founded to honour the memory of a great statesman.
Like my hon. Friend, I do not propose to say anything about Mr. Bonar Law, but hon. Members opposite ought seriously to consider whether an institution deliberately founded to honour the memory of a man who stands in the esteem of Members opposite should be swept aside by the presentation of this Bill. Ashridge College was founded to train people to become lecturers, speakers, writers and workers in the Conservative cause. We have to ask ourselves whether today the Conservative Party is in need of a college honouring the memory of Mr. Bonar Law and training persons to speak and write and propagate Conservative thought.
I can well understand that there are reasons which might impel hon. Members opposite to vote in favour of the Bill, and disregard the original reasons for this foundation. We realise that there is still a rift in the lute in the educational system. One reason the Conservative Party does not need such an educational college is because, under our present system, those people, in any case, can buy privileged education. We have still to face the fact, that, broadly speaking, those who support the Conservative cause are able to buy a privileged education not open to the rest of the population. When those people sit on the Treasury Bench over there they are also in a position to cut down educational facilities for the rest of the population who cannot afford privileged education. That is probably one of the reasons a college supposed to be endowed by the original Bonar Law Memorial Trust for the education of lecturers, speakers, writers and workers can now be dispensed with.
I would not claim to say anything further on that, because I think it is something entirely to be decided by hon. Members opposite. But we should certainly like to know tonight whether those hon. Members opposite have discussed this particular issue, and really agree that this college, which was founded for the purpose of educating persons in the gospels of Toryism and the training of people to propagate them, can now be dispensed with because the privileges of the educational system are sufficiently emphasised.
There is a much more serious issue. This Bill claims to convert Ashridge College from being a Conservative college,


on the governing body of which the Conservative Party has a controlling influence and interest, into a college which will give an impartial adult education, the governing body of which would be in a position to apply to the Ministry of Education for a grant from public funds. We have to ask whether today the Government are in favour of having more adult education colleges. This is a Bill to bring into being another adult education college; to convert one which was previously being financed and maintained by the Conservative Party, on a political basis, into an adult education college, which will certainly apply for grants from public funds in the same way as do other adult education colleges.
Yet we are faced with the situation in which the Ministry of Education—certainly under the present Minister—has been cutting down the grants to education bodies. The Minister of Education has conspicuously absented herself from this debate, in spite of the fact that it is concerned with an educational college. Under her administration we have been threatened with a cut in the grants for education bodies, and there is now a busybody committee of inquiry which is investigating adult education bodies for the purpose of trying to bring about some economies.
This Bill, far from bringing about any economies, will make another college eligible to apply for grants from the Exchequer for adult education purposes. Hon. Members on this side of the House would certainly like to know the view of the Ministry of Education on this matter. Is the Ministry in favour of more adult education colleges being made eligible for public grants? If it is not—as we would assume from the Minister's present policy—this Bill should be amended or rejected. If it is in favour of more of these colleges, we must consider very seriously whether we should allow other education projects, which have been turned down by the Minister, to be placed on a basis equal to that of Ashridge College.
It is no good for the present Minister to threaten the W.E.A. with a 10 per cent. cut and to set up a committee of inquiry in order to make economies if we are to allow Ashridge College, because

it is a Tory college, to be eligible for grants from the Exchequer. What is the Minister's view of the conversion of this college into an adult education college? We have not noticed any enthusiasm on the part of hon. Members opposite for promoting adult education. We did not notice it when the Minister threatened to cut adult education grants by 10 per cent.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Where is she?

Mr. Swingler: We should like to know where the Minister of Education is, and why other representatives of the Ministry have conspicuously absented themselves from the House when the subject of education is under discussion. We ought to know whether they are in favour of this college being made eligible for grants from the Ministry when it becomes an adult education college.
Page 3 of the Bill sets out the constitution of the existing governing body of the Ashridge (Bonar Law Memorial) Trust, which includes two governors appointed by the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations and two ex officio governors consisting of the Leader and Chairman of the Conservative Party. Page 5 sets out the proposed governing body of Ashridge College. That is to consist of the same governing body, except that for the names of the Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Conservative Party there are substituted the names of Viscount Jowitt, Professor Kircaldy, and Sir Norman Birkett.

Mr. Ellis Smith: It is still Conservative.

Mr. Swingler: As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) says, the proposed governing body is to consist of seven of the former governors, including Members of the House of Lords such as Viscount Caldecote, Baron Fairhaven and Baron Oaksey, so that the majority of the proposed governing body would still be Conservative.
The election of the Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords is obviously a step in the direction of impartiality and, to quote the Bill, "a rigid exclusion"of party politics from the proposed curricula in the new college, but when we examine the other substitutions—I am sure that they are estimable persons, upon whom I wish to make no per-


sonal attack—we find that Professor Kircaldy was the Assistant Secretary of the British Employers' Federation from 1929 to 1939. I do not know whether my trade unionist friends would agree that he is a very impartial person to substitute for the Prime Minister or Lord Woolton. Then we have the Principal of the London School of Economics. I do not know where he stands. But it is a fact that the Conservative nominees on the proposed governing body are in a majority of seven to three.
Yet we are asked to relate that situation to the proposed object of the College, as outlined in the Bill, namely, that
There shall be a rigid exclusion in the education given in the College of teaching calculated to support the policies of any political party and the general aim of the Corporation shall be to provide at the College education which shall be free from bias relating to party politics.
The House should examine this Bill with very great care. I ask bon. Members opposite to imagine the same sort of arrangement taking place in connection with the Labour Party. Suppose that there were a Keir Hardie Memorial Trust, and a college of this kind for the purpose of training writers, lecturers and propagandists of the Socialist cause, and the Labour Party came forward with a Bill seeking to convert this college from a party political college into a public education college, with a rigid exclusion of party politics, and suppose that it were proposed that seven of the persons who sat on the previous governing body should sit on the proposed new governing body, and that Lord Salisbury, the Leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, were brought in to dress up the Bill with an air or respectability? What would hon. Members opposite do? This is a racket.
This Bill should be subjected to the very closest scrutiny. We are not prepared to swallow Clause 6, which talks about an impartial education—which will enable this proposed college to receive grants from public funds—when, in fact, the Conservative Party is going to have a dominant majority on the proposed governing body.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Could my hon. Friend explain what he thinks the bearing of this argument might be on a similar proposal by

the National Council of Labour Colleges were it to be made?

Mr. Swingler: The National Council of Labour Colleges has always prided itself on its independence of public funds and its refusal to accept clauses in its constitution that would enable it to get grants from public funds. Thus it may honestly and straightforwardly pursue the object of training persons in the cause of Socialism.
This Bill represents a retreat on the part of the Conservative Party from that proud standpoint. Obviously, this college was quite honestly and straightforwardly a Tory college training people in Toryism, with a majority of Tory nominees on the governing body, but, unfortunately, in spite of the enormous funds raised by hon. Members opposite, this college apparently has gone bankrupt.
I see in the Schedule to the Bill a peculiar combination of investments, including investments in Courage's bitter, West Gloucester water and Imperial tobacco. Some of these investments are naturally a little shaky because of reports that Ministers have received in recent times. Still it is difficult to understand why the party opposite is unable to command sufficient funds to be able to continue to honour the memory of the late Mr.Bonar Law.
There are some peculiar statements in the setting out in the Bill of the objects of the Corporation. We are asked to approve a Bill to enable the Corporation to carry on this Trust and Ashridge College for
…the education of persons in economies, political and social science, political history with special reference to the development of the British constitution and the growth and expansion of the Commonwealth and Empire….
I must register an objection to that phrase, because, strictly speaking, it should read, "growth and expansion of the Commonwealth and the contraction of the Empire." We on this side of the House are proud of the fact that it should read "growth and expansion of the Commonwealth" with the granting of self-government to more and more of the territories and the contraction in the number of those territories directly governed from this country.
It is quite clear from the setting out of these objects that we have here an inevitable hangover of Tory philsophy from the college as originally founded. The Tories are unable to get themselves up to date even to get this Bill through the House. They are unable even to use the phraseology of modern times, let alone to alter the composition of the governing body to make it one that, in a sense, could be eligible for grants from public funds.
There should be serious debate on the other side of the House about whether Ashridge should not be maintained as a Conservative college. Members on the other side should ask themselves whether there is not still a need for a college to train people in what is said to be the philosophy of Conservatism. At any rate they should ask themselves where the money is going. How is it that they are unable to find funds to maintain Ashridge? They must ask themselves how it is that this House should be asked to pass a Bill to bring into being a new college for adult education which will apply for grants to the Minister of Education, when the present Minister of Education, conspicuously absent from our debate, is concerned with cutting down the amount of adult education, is concerned with reducing by 10 per cent, the grants for other adult education bodies, and has set up a committee of inquiry to find means of making economies. These are the principal issues involved, and they ought to be very seriously examined by the House before we come to the detailed scrutiny of the Bill.

7.35 p.m.

Mr. A. Woodburn: I must first of all declare an interest, not a financial but an educational interest, in the Bill. I have some responsibility for the existence of Ashridge College. Its being brought into being was the greatest compliment to the success of the National Council of Labour Colleges we have ever had. The fact that we weretraining men from every industry in the country with a knowledge of economics and history and social science made the life of Conservative candidates so unbearable that it was decided that before they faced the public they had better be trained, so that they might know the facts of life and of his-

tory. So the Bonar Law College was set up to train people to work throughout the country for the Conservative Party.
The National Council of Labour Colleges is an unbiased institution, an educational organisation. In other words, it teaches history, economics, and all these things quite objectively. Even facts are enough to make people Socialists. No intelligent and honest person, once he knows the facts, can avoid being a Socialist. Therefore, we need notteach anything but the facts to make people Socialists. Therefore, we have no hesitation in saying that our education is quite impartial and objective, free from all bias and guiltless of twisting history and twisting facts.
It is very difficult to be unbiased, and there will be some spheres in which, with the best will in the world, lecturers at Ashridge will feel this difficulty. The question is: who is to choose the lecturers, and who is to choose the students? How is this college to be comprised? Quiteclearly, if all the lecturers are Conservatives and all the students are Conservatives there will not be much impartial education. The education then will be of the kind the college was set up originally to provide.
As I say, it is difficult to be unbiased, and, moreover, education can appear to be impartial even when it is not. For instance, a bricklayer found his little boy bringing sums home for homework. Arithmetic is impartial, but the boy had a sum saying, "If a bricklayer works 54 hours-a week at x much a week, how much does he earn?"The bricklayer was most indignant and told the school teacher that he would like his son to do sums up to 48 hours a week but not more. So even arithmetic can be used for the inculcation of other than mathematical forms.
It is so with English. The teaching of the English language provides many opportunities for propaganda. If one says "The king is the finest shot of all in the world"one is automatically encouraging admiration of royalty. If a Communist Party teacher says "Stalin was the greatest man in the world." that is pretty good propaganda from the point of view of the Communists.
Who is to distinguish between what is propaganda and what is not? It is in the interpretation of history and the inter-


pretation oflife that the question becomes most obvious and acute. How will the General Strike be treated at this college? Will it be dealt with as a lockout of the miners? Or will be dealt with as a strike against the community? These are matters of interpretation,and there is no likelihood of impartiality.
Why not make the college a part of the public education system? Education is private or public. If this college is placed under the Ministry of Education, made subject to inspection by the Ministry, becomes a part of the public education organisation, there is some chance of its being impartial. The Workers'Educational Association was set up to try to extend culture to the workers, but it came up against an insuperable obstacle. One cannot extend culture to people whose minds are obsessed by economic problems. If we have millions of unemployed and millions who are afraid of becoming unemployed, as we did between the wars, their minds are not attuned to a study of the New Testament, literature, geology or the higher arts.
Clearly, these people wanted some solution to their problems. The study of economics is useless if it is merely an academic study of a Cook's tour round the capitalist system to see how beautiful it is. One must have an examination of the capitalist system to find out what is wrong with it and what is necessary to put it right. Whenever we face that problem in a scientific way, we are up against the problem of making the decisions about what is right and what is wrong. When we come to that problem,this college must cease to be impartial. There is no good in a college which will say, "There is a great moor in front of us with great deadly pits into which you might fall, but I am so impartial that I must not tell you the safe paths so that you can cross." That would be nonsense.
Education without a purpose is a waste of money. It is a dilletante exercise. Therefore, we are entitled to ask what is the purpose of the college. What will the students do? Are we merely training people to get better jobs at the expense of the State, or are we training them to speak from Conservative platforms and to become semi-intelligent Conservative candidates? I maintain that, even with the college, they cannot stand up to the

students of the working class who deal with these matters objectively.
To make people Conservatives one has to mislead them. If one teaches them the facts they are bound to come over to our side of the House and to favour a planned system of economics. How can economics be a science if it teaches chaos or if it preaches that nobody must organise anything at all and that we must leave everything to chance, so that we let the world grow up like Topsy or let it go to smithereens, if so desired?

Mr. S. O. Davies (Merthyr Tydvil): I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, who is making a most helpful contribution. My right hon. Friend knows that the motto of the National Council of Labour Colleges, which has done such great work—and the same will apply to the college we are talking about—is, "I promise to be candid but never impartial." There cannot be impartiality in politics.

Mr. Woodburn: I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me.
I mentioned earlier that I was President of the National Council of Labour Colleges. I am very proud to have taken part in its work. Its impartiality has had a meaning for the whole history of trade unionism. But when the Conservatives say, "No party politics in this college," they simply mean, "No Labour Party politics in this college." Any other kind of party politics is considered to be education by the Conservatives.
We have a reply to that. We believe that one has to guide people in the right direction, otherwise education is not a science. Nevertheless, the college has a purpose. That purpose is not disclosed because, so long as it is part of a Conservative organisation, or run by the Conservatives, even in memory of a great Scotsman to whom I pay my tribute, I am not satisfied that it does not still fulfil the purpose for which it was designed, under the guise of an impartial college.
There are one or two points of interest. Why is it being formed into a trust? Somebody has referred to all the investments. Once it is accepted as a trust the investments escape Income Tax. Under the system in which we live there is a clear distinction in that freedom from Income Tax between any college organised by the trade union movement or the Labour Party and anything organised by


anybody else. So long as it is organised for purposes other than Labour purposes it escapes Income Tax.
The Labour Party had a trust. A man died and left it a considerable amount of money. The Labour Party did everything it could to formulate a trust that would free it from Income Tax. No one was able to devise any method to get the money free from tax. The system was challenged in the courts, but the purpose of the donor was frustrated by the activities of people opposed to the Labour Party.

The Attorney-General (Sir Lionel Heald): That applies to every party.

Mr. Woodburn: That happened to the Labour Party.
There was no possibility of devising a trust to enable the Labour Party to get that advantage. The National Council of Labour Colleges is entirely dependent on the trade union movement. There are between six and seven million members of the trade union movement who are affiliated to it and from whose contributions the funds are paid. It is not a political organisation. That is recognised by law because, even when the last trade union Act was in existence, the money was still payable from the industrial funds of the unions. That is an important point. It is recognised as a purely trade union organisation—an educational body doing educational work. It has nothing in its constitution that ties it to any political party.
We are prepared to educate Conservatives. Conservative trade unionists take correspondence courses with the Labour Colleges day in and day out, and I am pleased to say that they benefit greatly from their education. We have no partiality about choosing our students. Every trade unionist whether Conservative, Labour—there may still be some Liberals—Communist or any one with no politics at all, can take education from the National Council of Labour Colleges free of charge. The trade union movement subscribes a general educational fund to provide for students who want to avail themselves of the facilities.
Nevertheless, Income Tax must be levied on any money that becomes available from investments for the National

Council of Labour Colleges. This is very great partiality on the part of the authorities against a working-class body. I am sorry to say that we have not a great many investments. Our money is mainly spent on the purpose for which it is raised. I am glad to say that the trade union movement subscribes most generously.
The work that is done is effective. I believe that, until the coming of television and wireless, the National Council of Labour Colleges was the greatest effective working-class education that was going on in this country. Over the last 20 or 30 years it has built up a great body of understanding people. Much of the steady advance in this country—the reliability of the electorate so that they know what is happening in spite of the Tory scares—is due to the fact that wehave a great basis of understanding of the fundamental developments in society.
We ought to look most carefully at the Bill and consider whether, under a guise which relieves it of Income Tax liability, it will not perpetuate the original purpose of the college which was, as far as possible, to train Tory candidates, speakers and hecklers.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: I am not sure whether I ought to declare an interest in this Bill, but I have had what is perhaps the unusual experience for hon. Members of this side of the House of twice lecturing at Ashridge.

Sir Frederick Messer: So have I.

Mr. Stewart: I am happy to know that I am not unique in that, and that my hon. Friend has had the same experience. Whether I am any more orless likely to give any lectures there in future after I have said what I have to say tonight, is not for me to judge, but I thought it proper to put the House in possession of that fact.
The history of the matter is well known. An attempt was made to found a college at which to teach politics to Conservatives, and it failed. I think it proper to point out that an attempt of that kind is almost bound to fail. If I may offer a word of advice to the party opposite, it is that it is a profound mistake for them to start any imitation of other parties' educational ventures among their members. Their history is littered with


the failure of attempts of that kind, and for the very good reason that, fundamentally, the attachment of a Conservative to his party is not based on intellectual conviction.
I am really making a present of most valuable advice to the party opposite, but they should realise that if once they start encouraging their followers to subject their convictions to inquiry and reason, they will fall to pieces. They would do much better to do what an older generation of Conservatives did and decide that all this education is really so much nonsense.
So the attempt failed. Then the college passed through an extremely interesting period during which—although it appeared still to have a considerable connection with the Conservative Party—it made a genuine attempt to do something very much different from being a Conservative propaganda college, and no doubt it was during that period that my hon. Friend and I lectured there.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Let me make it quite clear that I have never been near the place.

Mr. Stewart: I am happy to have my hon. Friend's assurance, but I am bound to say that I hope that, before we have finished with this Bill, Ashridge will be such a place that he will be prepared to lecture there.
We are now asked to continue this process and to recognise that Ashridge is making a real attempt to be an impartial college. I want to say a word or two about this question of impartiality. I do not wish to bore the House with any lengthy schoolboy reminiscences, but I well remember when I was at school hearing one of my masters give a lesson on current affairs which contained the phrase, "Of course, I am not speaking either for or against Socialism, but it always has been impracticable, and it always will be." I also remember a Roman history lesson on the great land reformer, Tiberius Gracchus, which began with the words, "Tiberius Gracchus was wrong. Get that into your heads before you start."
I should like to say that the two school masters who gave me those lessons were very charming and well qualified men. I

mention this point to show that these attempts at impartiality in teaching usually fail in their intent. Although young at the time when I was given these pieces of advice, I was a Socialist. They had singularly little effect on me, and I have always retained a certain affection for the memory of Tiberius Gracchus.
On the point of impartiality, which I thought was very well discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), I think it would be a mistake for this college, or for any college, to try to seek impartiality by inviting along a number of colourless people who would talk about public affairs and who would try to pretend that they had no political opinions of their own. The impartial person is, I suppose, someone who knows everything about the subject and, as a result, believes nothing. A lecture given by such a person is of no educational value at all.
If the college really wants to be impartial, it must seek to get people there of all shades of opinion to represent those shades of opinion as frankly and as competently and in as lively a manner as they can. I think I am right in saying that we shall possibly hear from hon. Members who are better acquainted with the subject than I am that that is what the college now has in mind and is seeking to do, that it will accept the warning given by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley and recognises that the people who go there to lecture are bound to express political opinions in the course of what they are saying, and that, if the college is to seek impartiality, it can only be done by making sure that all sorts of political opinions are expressed there.
I do not wish to weary the House by repeating the lectures I gave there, but in the course of what I was saying—and I was dealing with delegated legislation and Parliamentary control over nationalised industries—I pointed out that very often the criticism of delegated legislation arose not so much from a regard for the dignity of Parliament, but from a hearty dislike of what is known as the Welfare State, which cannot be administered without a great volume of delegated legislation.
I also pointed out that in many respects the nationalised industries have a better


record with regard to prices than have many parts of the private sector of our economy. I also made a number of other impartial statements about the general political life of the country. I am bound to say, in fairness to those who control Ashridige, that no impediment was put in the way of my doing so, and that no adverse comment was made after I had finished doing so. If they will continue to give to all opinions a free opportunity ofexpression, then we might feel that they are trying to do what Clause 6 describes.
I can well accept the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley that what is their real intention could possibly be better examined later than at present, and I think that when the Bill comes to be considered in detail attention ought to be given to framing more precisely what they really want when we come to Clause 6. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley suggested that it would be wise not to press opposition to the Second Reading of this Bill to a Division. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) was of the same opinion, but I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley was right.
There are a number of reasons why we should not press the matter to a Division on Second Reading. There is one which will occur to a number of hon. Members who have studied the Order Paper, which is that, should it be defeated on Second Reading, we should have no opportunity of discussing the very interesting suggestions which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley proposes to make on the Bill at a later stage.
There is also the point that we have at Ashridge a valuable building, some of whose educational work is of undoubted value, and which, with certain Amendments to the Bill, could be made a useful addition to this country's store of adult education facilities. Much as we may be vexed at the Minister of Education's previous attack on adult education and her deplorable absence from the House today—and not only her absence, but that of the Parliamentary Secretary also, whom we would have been glad to hear explaining the Bill—we should, I think, be cutting off our noses to spite our faces if,

because the Minister is attacking certain pants of adult education, we were to throw away an opportunity of turning what is a very suitable building and organisation into something that can be really used by us.

Mr. Ellis Smith: My hon. Friend was present during the whole of the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn). How does he reconcile that advice with the forthright speech made by my right hon. Friend? In addition, does he not agree that there is an increasing anti-working-class attitude adopted throughout the television and wireless programmes, and should we not therefore take a stand against such proposals as appear in this Bill?

Mr. Stewart: I am not discussing the same point as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire was discussing. The point I am trying to make is this. There is a place for an institution in which all types of partisan opinion can freely express themselves—
Mr. Ellis Smith: But not working-class opinion.

Mr. Stewart: Certainly; but my criticism of the institutions which my hon. Friend has just mentioned is that they do not give sufficient expression to certain particular brands of opinion. I say there is a place in the country's educational system for an institution which gives genuine opportunity to all types of opinion to be expressed in a lively and competent manner.

Mr. Woodburn: I am not sure who is sponsoring this Bill. I have heard that many people are criticising it. Could my hon. Friend tell us how the students are to be selected for this college? Are they to be sent by the Conservative Party, or are they going to be selected by some other body? Can any trade union send people there and fill the college?

Mr. Stewart: I cannot answer those questions. I am not sponsoring the Bill. I am merely expressingan opinion based on having listened to the speeches of my hon. Friends and on such knowledge as I have of the institution itself. In deed, I hope we shall at a later stage hear replies to some of the questions which my right hon. Friend has just asked. But if the hope that I have ex-


pressed, and about which some of my hon. Friends feel doubtful, is to be fulfilled, then it seams to me that, should the House be willing to give this Bill a Second Reading, it would be necessary to look very narrowly at certain of the detailed provisions of the Bill.
The provision that I am most interested in is that relating to the governors, because if we get that right the other things will follow pretty well automatically. I am disquieted to find not only that among the list of the intended governors are certain sections of public opinion quite inadequately represented, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley pointed out, but when we turn to the Schedules and see how future governors are to be appointed we find that they are to be appointed by the existing governors. In order to appoint any new governor there has to be the consent of two-thirds of the existing governors which, with the proportions of opinion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley has pointed out, would mean, if there were no real sense of fairness, that the type of opinion represented on this side of the House could be squeezed out of the governing body altogether.
I hope and believe that that is not the intention of those who are concerned to get this Bill through. But if it is not their intention, I think they will have to indicate more plainly a willingness completely to reconsider this list, to reconsider the wording of Clause 6 and to answer some of the questions that have been asked about the choice of students. I believe that at present a good many people become students there simply because they have seen advertisements of the lecture courses, some of which, indeed, may be seen in the columns of the "New Statesman"and others in the columns of "The Economist."
There are various other ways by which people get in. I could not hope to give a detailed account because I have not the knowledge, but it is something of which the House should usefully be informed. As I say, while I have these detailed criticisms to make, they seem to me to be matters that could be put right at a later stage if there is the will on the part of those who are specially concerned with the Bill to put them right. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley that we should be taking the wisest course

if we did not press our opposition to the Second Reading but made it possible to proceed both to the very interesting Instructions which he has in mind and to a number of other points which have been raised in the course of the debate.

Mr. Swingler: Would not my hon. Friend agree that it is impossible to give this Bill an unchallenged Second Reading unless we have some assurance that the composition of the governing body is reconsidered, for that body plainly retains the administration of the college in the Conservative Party?

Mr. Stewart: I thought I had made that point.

8.6 p.m.

Mr. Henry Usborne: I want to draw the attention of the House to one or two aspects of this Bill, and I hope to do so shortly. The length of my speech, I must confess, will very largely depend upon you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because I am not quite clear whether this is strictly the appropriate moment at which to make certain points or whether I should do so later when we debate the Instruction to the Committee, which I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) will move.
I should like to say, first, how grateful I am sure the House is to the Leader of the House for giving us this opportunity to discuss a very important Bill—

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Wigg rose—

Mr. Usborne: I think I know what my hon. Friend was about to say. It was, in fact, generous of the Leader of the House only because my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley had made it possible so to do by objecting last Monday and the Monday before. I think it is also most important that we should understand something of the nature of the curious procedure in which all these Private Bills are automatically involved.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): The question of procedure does not arise at this stage. This is the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Usborne: I was aware, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you might trip me up on this point, but I wanted to come in a curious and odd way to Clause 6 of this Bill, because it will be seen in that Clause


that the object of Ashridge, this very college, is
…to carry on…education of persons in economics, political and social science, political history with special reference to the development of the British Constitution….
Part of this curious British Constitution involves the procedure by which these very Bills reach the House of Commons and pass through it.
I want to know, therefore, what they are going to teach when they discuss the British Constitution, and whether they are going to discuss the procedure of Private Bills. That seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate point to make. It is a perfectly genuine and honest question to ask, and it is a great pity that apparently there is nobody here who is prepared to answer it. Am I out of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is in order in mentioning that the procedure may form part of the Constitution, but he is not in order in discussing the procedure for Private Bills on this subject.

Mr. Usborne: That being so, I want to draw attention to the fact that this Bill is important because of the curious anomalies and, since I have the expectation of catching your eye later, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, when we debate the Instruction, I will conclude now by saying that I am doubtful whether we should give this Bill a Second Reading without a Division.
My worry is this. I am always extremely reluctant to differ in any way from the views expressed to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley. He said quite clearly to me a few moments ago that I ought to give this Bill a Second Reading without a vote. I am not accustomed to disobeying his orders if I can avoid it, but in view of what other hon. Members have said I must draw to the attention of the House the fact that there is more in the Bill than has apparently met the eye of my vigilant Friend. For my part, I am prepared to give the Bill a Second Reading without a vote if it is generally agreed by others that that is the right procedure, subject to the assurance which I have already received from you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that one of what I think

to be the most important points of the debate can be fully discussed and ventilated on an appropriate occasion.

Mr. Wigg: There is a big difference between a Private Bill and a Public Bill on Second Reading. What is in this Bill has yet to be proved and, quite clearly, the promoters of the Bill, having gone as far as this, have a right that the Bill should be given a Second Reading so that the matter within it may be considered in Committee. I should have thought that the proper method was to divide against the Bill on Third Reading.

Mr. Swingler: On a point of order. May I draw to your attention, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the fact that there is no Minister on the Treasury Bench and, apparently, nobody in charge of the Bill? Is not that contempt of the House?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is not a point of order.

Mr. Swingler: Is nobody in charge of the Bill?

Mr. Usborne: In view of the opinion expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, who is clearly an expert on these matters, I think the course which he suggests is right.: Mr. Ellis Smith:Is my hon. Friend aware that many, many times hon. Members have opposed the Second Reading of Private Bills and that we in North Staffordshire suffered when we were trying to municipalise our transport system because hon. Members representing the party opposite went into the Lobby against us?

Mr. Usborne: I am sure that there are bitter memories in North Staffordshire, because of the procedure which is followed in respect of Private Bills, but if I pursued that point I should be out of order.
I conclude by pointing out that there is an important aspect which has not yet been discussed. I think we must discuss it at length and in all seriousness and I look forward, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to the moment when I shall catch your eye later.

8.12 p.m.

Mr. Derek Walker-Smith: The House has listened to some remarkable and varying speeches this evening, and not the least interesting part of the


proceedings has been to see the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in the unaccustomed rôle of counsel of moderation. Instead of urging forward his more passive friends, a rôle to which he has become accustomed, he has tonight been seeking to restrain them and to guide them into paths of wisdom. I have a certain sympathy with him, because I know perfectly well how very difficult a task that is and how it will test his abilities if he is to succeed.
The hon. Member for Dudleyis right in what he says about a Private Bill. This is not a Government Bill; this has not been commended from the Treasury Bench. There is no question of the Government commending the Bill to the House, nor any question of confidence in the Government. The promoters of the Bill have no representation in a Second Reading debate in the House of Commons. They are able to put their case in Committee, according to the established procedure, but they have no representation of any sort, kind or description on the Floor of the House and there is no possibility of any provision for answering the sort of points put by hon. Members opposite in a Second Reading debate.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Walker-Smith: I will give way if hon. Members intervene one at a time.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: While it may be that no one has been officially deputed to speak on behalf of the promoters, or those who have instructed the promoters, surely it is not unreasonable to suppose that there is at least one hon. Member on the Government side of the House who is a friend of this institution and would like to say a kind word about it?

Mr. Usborne: May I put this point to the hon. Member? We are very perplexed about it. There is apparently no one on the Front Bench ready to reply.Would it not be appropriate if the Patronage Secretary were to speak on the matter? Surely he must have something to say about it.

Mr. Swingler: Is the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith) asking the House to believe that, although this college is controlled by the Conservative Central Office, the authorities of the college have never approached any Member of the Conservative Party at all on

the fact that they were sponsoring the Bill? Are we to believe that the liaison in the Conservative Party is so incompetent—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: These interventions are becoming second speeches.

Mr. Walker-Smith: If I may seek to reply to those varying points which were put to me just now, if my understanding is correct, the Conservative Party have not been in effective control of this college for a very long time prior to the introduction of the Bill.

Mr. Swingler: Oh!

Mr. Walker-Smith: That is a fact. I should like to define my own position in connection with this matter. This college is in the county for which I have the honour to be one of the Members. My association with the college, I am afraid, is of the most tenuous. Unlike the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), I have not been invited to lecture there at any time. The hon. Member for Fulham, East made it clear that he and other hon. Members on that side of the House had been in the habit of addressing this college before the introduction of the Bill.

Mr. Stewart: It was not a habit.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I do not know how many times it takes to make a habit, but I heard the hon. Member say that the college invited him again, which was flattering to him.
I am rather disappointed in the hon. Member for Fulham, East. He has stated that when he was at school he was fortunate enough to have aschool master so wise as to impress upon his youthful intelligence that Socialism had always failed in practice, yet, in spite of that, he took so little advantage of his educational opportunities that he has persisted in error and has even sought to communicate it to others in after years.
The hon. Member may be able to inform the House as to what is the ratio of hon. Members on his side of the House who have been invited to speak at this college, prior to the change which it is proposed to make in the Bill and since 1945. We know that he has. We know that the hon. Member for Tottenham (Sir. F. Messer) has addressed them, as have other hon. Members. The hon.
Member for Stoke-ort-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) has not yet been there, but no doubt he will receive an invitation after the Bill has been passed, and I will make a special point of trying to attend as a student when that occasion arises so as not to miss his lecture.

Mr. Ellis Smith: In that case, the hon. Member will never attend.

Mr. Walker-Smith: It is possible that the hon. Member will receive the invitation. Some of his hon. Friends have received invitations and have lectured there during the last seven years.
It is quite wrong for hon. Members opposite to suggest that this college is at present a Conservative college or has been a Conservative college since 1945. If it is not a Conservative college at present, under the present trustees, what possible likelihood can there be, despite the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Stafford, who I regret is now leaving the Chamber, that it will be a sort of crypto-Conservative college after the Bill has been passed, in clear breach of the statutory provisions which will be imposed upon it?

Mr. Swingler: My constituency is Newcastle-under-Lyme. May I point out that, in spite of all the hon. Member may have said about my colleagues who have been to the college—and we do not know how many hon. Members on his side of the House have been there—nevertheless the governing body, as set out in the Bill, is completely and deliberately dominated by the Conservative Party and includes the Prime Minister and Chairman of the Tory Party.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I apologise for getting the hon. Member's constituency wrong inadvertently. The hon. Member has quite mistaken the point. The point which I made was this. If at the time when the Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Conservative Party were governors of this college, the hon. Member for Fulham, East and the hon. Member for Tottenham and others addressed the college, how could it be that in the future, when the Prime Minister and the Chairman of the Conservative Party are no longer governors, there would be any less scope for hon. Members opposite or others holding their

views to participate in the teaching of the college, provided that they, like the Conservatives, obey the proviso in Clause 6 of the Bill?

Mr. Woodburn: I believe that at the Conservative Conference the working man is allowed to make a speech, but that does not make the Conservative Party an impartial party.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I cannot quite follow the logic of that. I want to see this matter through, because it seems to me to be a point of major importance. It is conceivable that in the last eight years or so, in the post-war period, Ashridge has been conducting these specific courses with the body of governors and the trustees to whom hon. Members opposite object. I am submitting to the House that it is fantastic to suggest that there would be a retreat from that position when the college has been, as it were, de-Toryised. It is my hon. Friends and myself who ought to be complaining about this Bill, because it is we who are losing, or who have lost our Conservative college.
I only wish that I could ascribe it to the sentiments ofChristian charity on the part of hon. Members opposite that they are so reluctant that we should lose our college because, as the right hon. Gentle man says, they have so many on the other side. I want to put this point. So far as this accusation is concerned that there will be Conservative propaganda carried on at this college—

Mr. Swingler: Will the hon. Member address himself to the point. Who is in control of this college? I am not concerned about how the college may have been conducted in the last few years. But it is plain to us that seven out of 11 of the proposed governors are, the same as seven out of ten of the previous governors, acceptable to the Conservative Party. The controlling interest, therefore, remains with the Conservative Party.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I was coming to that point, but I did not want to be at all reluctant about giving way. The control is, of course, vested in the governors who are listed in Clause 2 of the Bill, but they exercise that control subject to the objects of the Corporation as set out in Clause 6. I would remind


the House that the objects of the Corporation are for
…the education of persons in economics political and social science political history with special reference to the development of theBritish Constitution and the growth and expansion of the Commonwealth and Empire and in such other subjects as the governors may from time to time determine calculated generally to enable the students to become profitable members of the nation and the Commonwealth;

Mr. E. Fernyhough: Will the hon. Member tell me what is meant by
profitable members of the nation and the Commonwealth"?
Does that mean the landlord to whom my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) has been referring to recently?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I do not think that the wording is happily chosen. It has nothing to do, I imagine, with economics; it means the social good of desirable members of the Commonwealth. If that is the only point made about the objects, I think that the House can assume that the objects are pretty well drawn in the Bill. Now we come to the proviso:
There shall be a rigid exclusion in the education given in the College of teaching calculated to support the policies of any political party and the general aim of the Corporation shall be to provide at the College education which shall be free from bias relating to party politics;
If that means anything, and it is very clearly drafted, it means that it would be a clear breach of trust for there to be any teaching at that college directed to giving a preference to one political party over another. There can be no doubt about that whatever. So when the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler), who has again left the Chamber, says that the governors have got control, it is, of course, control subject to the very strict and clear definition laid down in proviso.
The question which hon. Members opposite have to answer is this. Are they suggesting—because they come very nearto it—that the governors, and I am going to name three in number—Sir Norman Birkett, Lord Justice of Appeal, Lord Jowitt, the former Lord Chancellor, and Lord Oaksey, a Lord of Appeal—are, first, incompetent to understand the words of that inhibition or, secondly, that they would wilfully and knowingly commit a breach of trust in regard to it. Is any

hon. Gentleman opposite going to answer "Yes" to those questions?

Mr. Woodburn: All that could be fulfilled in the direction that the hon. Member has outlined, but if the students are confined to people who come from the Conservative Party and they are taught how to run elections efficiently and how to do a whole lot of other things in regard to constitutional law, in the working of canvassing and many other things of that kind, which are quite impartial, it would nevertheless be very valuable to the Conservative Party.

Mr. Walker-Smith: If I may give a spot opinion, I should say that that would clearly be a breach of the trust imposedby Clause 6 of the Bill. Am I to assume that the right hon. Gentleman agrees that there would be no knowing breach of this provision by the governors constituted as they are? Does he accept that?

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Ivor Owen Thomas: Will the hon. Member give way?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I want to finish—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If the hon. Member does not give way, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. I. O. Thomas) must resume his seat.

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Member was just making up his mind to give way.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I was glad to give way to the hon. Member, but I am seeking at the moment to get a direct answer to a direct question, either from the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire, who has had the courtesy to remain, or from the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, if he chooses to come back. Is the right hon. Gentleman or any hon. Member opposite prepared to answer those two questions?

Mr. I. O. Thomas: I will answer the two questions as one by putting another question. Would the hon. Member agree that if the right, specific and declared purpose of the Bill and of these proposals is to set up a non-party, non-political, non-sectarian—[An HON. MEMBER: "Nonsensical."]—college, such object will be achieved by the provisions of Clause 5? Would he not agree that there


would be much more sense in the contention for the non-party, non-sectarian basis of such a college if, in addition to two governors to be appointed by the Executive Committee of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, an Amendment were put down to include also two members of the Labour Party, two members of the Liberal Party, two members of the Communist Party and two members of the Salvation Army?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I remind hon. Members that it is the tradition of the House that the debate be conducted by speeches and not by cross-examination. These questions should not be allowed to develop into speeches.

Mr. Walker-Smith: That was a most extraordinary exercise on the part of thehon. Member. I put two specific questions and invited any right hon. or hon. Member opposite to answer them. There were no volunteers apart from the hon. Member for The Wrekin, who, I understood, rose to answer my questions, or, at least, one of them. Instead, he put a question of his own, which rather lost its point because he had apparently confused the provisions of the Bill with the original provisions for the appointment of governors under the original trust deed. And so the hon. Member's question, which might have had a great force and pungency in 1929, or whenever it was, rather loses in this debate that freshness of approach to which we are accustomed from him.
The House must take it on this main point that no hon. or right hon. Member opposite is prepared to say that the governors, and particularly those three governors, high luminaries of the law, whom I have specified, would either fail to understand the inhibition placed on them by that proviso or that they would wilfully disregard it and commita breach of trust.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I will answer that question. Those governors will be as impartial as the B.B.C. are in "Any Questions" or "In the News" on television.

Mr. Walker-Smith: Certainly; that is quite a good principle, and I am coming to that in a moment. What is clearly established, and this is the vital point for the House to consider, is that there

is no suggestion whatever—and it ought to be repudiated by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), if he is to address the House on behalf of his hon. Friends—that there would be any conscious political propaganda in breach of this provision under the Bill.

Sir Richard Acland: Does the hon. Member not appreciate that under astrict administration of the terms of the Clause, which he is defending, about the total exclusion of anything which could smell of direct party propaganda on one side or the other, one can get discussion and exposition of all those ideas which are conformable to a Conservative-Tory status quo outlook on life and cannot get one minute's discussion or exposition of any of the ideas which are conformable to a Socialist outlook on life?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member must not develop an intervention into a speech in that form.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The hon. Gentleman will no doubt get an opportunity of saying all this. I was about to come to the points put to me by two hon. Members opposite. I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Dudley, who made the initial speech in the debate, about the rigid exclusion of political opinions from a course of adult education. I am not so political as the hon. Member. [HON. MEMBERS"Oh!"] The hon. Member claims to be 100 per cent. political. I do not claim to be that, but I have some sympathy with the difficulty of the total exclusion of what might be called political discussion on the political implications of matters economic, social, cultural and so on.
The question then is, how can this proviso be adhered to withouthaving that somewhat anaemic effect which is feared by the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends? Presumably there would be no breach of this trust if there were a certain expression of political opinions so long as it was balanced. What this proviso says is that there is to be rigid exclusion of teaching calculated to support the policies of any political party, and then it goes on to say:
Education…shall be free from bias relating to particular party politics.
The word "bias" means that there is only one expression of opinion.

Sir R. Acland: This excludes any expression of political opinion.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The hon. Member is very confident about expressions of that kind, but I doubt whether it is so. I should have thought that if there was a balanced view there would not be bias. What the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South suggests is that it could be had in the way that we find it in some B.B.C. programmes like "Any Questions" and "In the News."

Sir R. Acland: Three Tories and one Labour.

Mr. Walker-Smith: There the party view is balanced. [HON. MEMBERS"Oh!"] Transport House is deluged with complaints that the Conservatives have been over-represented, and the Conservative Central Office is deluged with complaints that the Socialists have too much representation. That is always the way, but if it is designed to have a possible expression of political opinion without infringing the proviso as to political neutrality, that is the only way in which it could be done.
If there were any effort; at political propaganda on one side or the other, it would merely be a breach of the trust drawn up by these three great legal luminaries, whom no hon. Member opposite, I am glad to note, has accused of being likely to harbour any such thoughts.I want to say one further thing, and I am sorry to have been so long.

Hon. Members: No.

Dr. H. Morgan: It is all right. Is it very amusing.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I just want to make this final point. I was a little bit shocked by what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields said about education. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that education was no use unless it was directed to a specific political or economic end. [HON. MEMBERS"No."] That is how my hon. Friends and I understood it. That is a narrow view of education which not so many years ago would have been thought to be a very wrong approach. After all, the object of education, as I have always understood it, is the seeking after knowledge and truth. If we lay down a predestined end to which that education must strive, we are limiting the approach

of education and derogating from its value. That is why there is a great deal to be said for education free from its political context. What the hon. Gentleman is really advocating is propaganda rather than education.

Mr. Woodburn: But the hon. Gentleman will agree that there is a difference in the purpose of merely filling in the time of people by teaching them to be dilettante and doing nothing, and giving them an understanding of the world in which they live, which is, I understand, the avowed purpose of this college, so that when students leave they can understand the problems that will confront them. The college does not form conclusions for them.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The right hon. Gentleman has now phrased it differently and much more acceptably to me. I accept that this is a proper approach, but, if he reads Hansard tomorrow, he will see that this is not quite what he said before.
We in the Conservative Party, who now have no connection with this college, and have not had for some years, might have thought ourselves to be the aggrieved parties. It is interesting to see the approach of hon. Gentlemen opposite to this question tonight. So far as the main attack has been made, the attack upon the governors and the possibility of their committing a breach of trust, it seems that that is not now pressed by hon. Gentlemen opposite. In those circumstances, I think the House must accept that these desirable objects will be prosecuted with the freedom from bias which is laid down by the Bill. In those circumstances it would seem appropriate that the Bill should have its Second Reading, and that any improvements which fall to be made in it should be made by the ordinary procedure.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. Ede: We now know that the Chairman of the 1922 Committee is not a political person, but we have never observed the non-political part of him in this House yet. I am disappointed that there has been no speech from the Government Front Bench tonight because it is usual, on every Private Bill that is contested, for the Minister in charge of the Department affected to be present and to tender advice to the House. I have a


fairly long experience of taking part in Private Bill discussions on the Floor of this House but I cannot recollect an occasion when that has not been the case.
I think that the points raised tonight, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler), should have been commented on by one of the Ministers responsible for this Department; in fact, it seems to me just about the kind of thing on which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education might excel. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Send for him."] We are entitled to complain on that point.
I want to deal with the specific question put by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith), who drew our attention to the specific wording of the proviso to Clause 6. In the first place, he seemed to pass lightly over the word "rigid." The proviso says:
There shall be a rigid exclusion in the education given in the College of teaching calculated to support the policies of any political party….
The word "rigid" must have some meaning and I should have thought that thehon. Gentleman might, when he was trying to explain away the proviso, have dealt with it. I do not think that giving the policies of three or four different parties is conforming to the rigid exclusion from the education given in the college of teaching calculated to support the policies of any political party.

Mr. Walker-Smith: If the right hon. Gentleman asks my opinion, it is that the word "rigid"is, of course, quite tautological and redundant. A thing is either excluded or not. In my humble view, there is no force in the word. Taking the case which the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, if one had three or four speakers with different political views

Division No. 35.]
AYES
[8.49 p.m.


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Bowen, E. R.
Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)


Arbuthnot, John
Braine, B. R.
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)


Assheton, Rt. Han. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Cole, Norman


Baldwin, A. E.
Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)
Colegate, W. A.


Banks, Col. C.
Browne, Jack (Govan)
Conant, Maj. R. J. E.


Barber, Anthony
Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Cooper-Key, E. M.


Barlow, Sir John
Bullard, D. G.
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)


Baxter, A. B.
Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.


Beach, Maj. Hicks
Burden, F. F. A.
Crouch, R. F.


Beamish, Maj. Tufton
Butcher, Sir Herbert
Deedes, W. F.


Beamish, Philip (Bolton. E.)
Campbell, Sir David
Digby, S. Wingfield


Bishop, F. P.
Carr, Robert
Dodds-Parker, A. D.


Black, C. W.
Cary, Sir Robert
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.


Bossom, Sir A. C.
Channon, H.
Doughty, C. J. A.

balancing out, as it were, one would have to look at the totality of the effect produced, and that would not be an effect
…calculated to support the policies of any political party….

Mr. Ede: I noticed earlier in the evening that the Attorney-General had a conversation with the hon. Member. I rather gathered that he was giving the hon. Member some hints as to the proper way of dealing with this Bill, but I would not expect the Attorney-General to accept the parenthood of the explanation which the hon. Member has just given us.
The hon. Member also asked whether we imagined that the three distinguished lawyers whom he named would be a party to a breach of the trust, either by making a breach themselves or conniving at one. After all, they are only three out of 11. Suppose that they are voted down, what remedy have they? I suppose that they can apply for an injunction in the courts to restrain their colleagues—but that might be a somewhat expensive business—or they could resign. They might be driven to resignation and the remaining eight would then elect three to take their places.
Is this the kind of Bill that ought to receive a Second Reading? The promotersought to be here on oath, before a Committee. Then when we receive the Bill back on Third Reading we shall have to make up our minds whether we think that this Bill should go on the Statute Book or not. I understand that unless this debate ends by nine o'clock we cannot get to the Instructions. I therefore suggest to my hon. Friends that at this stage we ought to give the Bill a Second Reading and get on to the Instructions.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 160; Noes, 96.

Douglas Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
Linstead, Sir H. N.
Roper, Sir Harold


Drayson, G. B.
Llewellyn, D. T.
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard


Drewe, Sir C.
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Russell, R. S.


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.
Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.


Duthie, W. S.
Low, A. R. W.
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.


Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Scott, R. Donald


Ford, Mrs. Patricia
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Fort, R.
McCallum, Major D.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.
Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)


Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T D. (Pollok)
Macdonald, Sir Peter
Stevens, G. P.


Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)
McKibbin, A. J.
Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)


George, Rt. Hon. Maj. G. Lloyd
Maclean, Fitzroy
Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)


Glover, D.
Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.


Gomme-Duncan, Col A.
MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Gough, G. F. H.
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Summers, G. S.


Gower, H. R.
Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)
Sutcliffe, Sir Harold


Graham, Sir Fergus
Maude, Angus
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Gridley, Sir Arnold
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Medlicott, Brig. F.
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Turner, H. F. L.


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Neave, Airey
Turton, R. H.


Higgs, J. M. C.
Nicholls, Harmar
Vane, W. M. F.


Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)
Vosper, D. F.


Hirst, Geoffrey
Nield, Basil (Chester)
Wade, D. W.


Hollis, M. C.
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Wall, P. H. B.


Horobin, I. M
Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian (Weston-super-Mare)
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Hurd, A. R.
Page, R. G.
Webbe, Sir H. (London &amp; Westminster)


Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)
Peto, Brig. C. H. M.
Wellwood, W.


Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.
Pickthorn, K. W. M.
William, Gerald (Tonbridge)


Iremonger, T. L.
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Powell, J. Enoch
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Raikes, Sir Victor
Wills, G.


Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)
Rayner, Brig. R.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Kaberry, D.
Redmayne, M.



Lambert, Hon. G.
Rees-Davies, W. R.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Renton, D. L. M.
Mr. Walker-Smith and Mr. Grimston.


Legh, Hon, Peter (Petersfield)
Robson-Brown, W.



Lindsay, Martin
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)





NOES


Awbery, S. S.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Proctor, W. T.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Rankin, John


Beswick, F.
Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)
Rhodes, H.


Brockway, A. F.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Richards, R.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Roberts. Albert (Normanton)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Ross, William


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Keenan, W.
Shackleton, E. A. A.


Champion, A. J.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Shurmer, P. L. E.


Chapman, W. D.
Lindgren, G. S.
Simmons, C. J (Brierley Hill)


Coldrick, W.
Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Logan, D. G.
Sparks, J. A.


Cullen, Mrs. A.
McGhee, H. G.
Swingler, S. T.


Davies, Harold (Leek)
McInnes, J.
Sylvester, G. O.


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Deer, G.
MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)


Dodds, N. N.
Mann, Mrs. Jean
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Manuel, A. C.
Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)


Fernyhough, E.
Mason, Roy
Timmons, J.


Fienburgh, W.
Monslow, W.
Viant, S. P.


Finch, H. J.
Moody, A. S.
Wallace, H. W.


Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Warbey, W. N.


Forman, J. C.
Mort, D. L.
Watkins, T. E.


Gibson, C. W.
Murray, J. D.
Weitzman, D.


Gooch, E. G.
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Oliver, G. H.
West, D. G.


Griffiths, David (Rather Valley)
Orbach, M.
Wheeldon, W. E.


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Oswald, T.
Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)


Hargreaves, A.
Padley, W. E.
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Holman, P.
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Hubbard, T. F.
Palmer, A. M. F.
Woodburn, R. Hon. A.


Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)
Pearson, A.



Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Peart, T. F.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Sir Richard Acland and 




Mrs. Slater.

Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Wigg: I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill to amend Clause 6, line 35, by inserting after the second "and,":
local government and its development having special regard to the standing orders of the House of Commons relating to private business.
Clause 6 of the Bill, to which the House has given a Second Reading, provides for the subjects which the governors are to provide at Ashridge College. It lays down that there shall be carried on the education of persons in economic, political and social science, and political history, with special reference to development of the British Constitution and the growth and expansion of the Commonwealth and Empire.
In these days it is held that a citizen who wishes to understand and play a full part in the community of which he is a member must havean understanding of local government procedure. It follows without question that, as this is the Mother of Parliaments, the competent citizens must understand the Standing Orders of the House, even though some hon. Members fall a little short in that respect. It is held that the competent citizen needs to understand not only the function of local government but also the Standing Orders of the House and, of course, he needs to understand the workings of the House in relation to—

Captain Charles Waterhouse(Leicester, South-East): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I was in the Lobby, in readiness for the Division, but the Tellers left the door before I had gone through.

Sir Ian Fraser: Further to that point of order. Thesame thing occurred to me. I came through the Lobby, but there was no one to count me.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: We have passed on to other business since then. Mr. Wigg.

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Wigg rose—

Captain Waterhouse: Further to that point of order. Would you be good enough, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to indicate to me what remedy I have, if any?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The objection must be taken before the figures are declared.

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Wigg rose—

Sir I. Fraser: Further to that point of order. Do you recall to mind, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, as I do, the time when the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern), Mr. George Buchanan and our very friendly colleague, the late Mr. Maxton, stood in the Lobby for a quarter of an hour singing songs? Nobody hurried them through, butthey were counted at the end. With all respect, may I ask why we were not counted?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That was a different point, and the point was raised at a different time.

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Wigg rose—

Sir Robert Perkins (Stroud and Thorn-bury): Further to the point of order. My name was taken by the Clerk and, therefore, my vote has been recorded, but it has not been counted. What remedy have I?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: None at all, except, as far as I know, the consolation of philosophy, because it is too late toraise the point now. Mr. Wigg.

Mr. Wigg: I was making the point that it is necessary for a person who wants to play his full part in a democratic community to understand the workings of local government and to understand the rules of order of the House so far as they affect local government.
The Standing Orders of the House governing Private Business are very much greater in number and far more extensive than those dealing with Public Business. Of the 310 pages of our Standing Orders, 88 are given over to Public Business and the remainder to Private Business. It is many years since there has been any inquiry into the Private Business of the House. In 1930 a numerically weak Labour Administration set up a Select Committee to inquire into the workings of Private Bills, and a very good Report was produced. Those who served on the Committee had every reason to be proud of their work. They made a thorough examination of the workings of Private Bill procedure, and, as a result, the procedure was made much easier than it had been in the past and the cost was reduced.
I submit that the time has now come for a further inquiry. I do not want to go very much further than saying that, in my opinion, and in the opinion of all those to whom I have talked, there is now a reasonable case for an inquiry. I say quite frankly that I thought my case had been made for me a thousand times better than I could make it for myself in a leading article in "The Times"this morning, in which it is stated that the opinion is widely held that the procedure is cumbersome and expensive. It goes on to say that, if an inquiry were held, that inquiry might discover that the limit of human wisdom had been reached, so that nothing more can be done.
I have qualified what I have said by pointing out that that is as far as I want to go, except to say that as a result of the experience which I had last year in watching the procedure adopted on a Bill promoted by the Corporation of Dudley, which town I have the honour to represent, I was convincedthat there was a case for examination by a Joint Committee to consider Private Bills. In saying that, I am saying nothing novel—

Captain J. A. L. Duncan: On a point of order. I cannot see the relation between what the hon. Gentleman is saying and the Instruction which he is moving.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman developing his argument, and I do not quite know where it is leading.

Mr. Wigg: I was saying that the argument I was advancing is nothing novel, and ifthe hon. and gallant Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) does not know how I am in order in doing so, I will give him a lecture after our proceedings have finished and not charge him for it, pointing out the extent to which I am in order. The hon. andgallant Gentleman has only just come into the House, and my Instruction is to the Governors of Ashridge College to the effect that that college shall study local government. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will look at the Order Paper, he will see thatit relates to the development of the college, having special regard to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons relating to Private Business. I am now arguing that one of the things that will

have to be studied is the extent to which Private Business procedure in this House is out of date and the extent to which that procedure needs to be inquired into.
I am suggesting that one of the things which students at Ashridge will have to look at is the proceedings which took place in this House on 19th March, 1900, when the then Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Lowther, who afterwards became Mr. Speaker, advanced the argument that there ought to be a Joint Private Bill procedure because of the intolerable position in which local authorities found themselves. I do not want to quote at length, because hon. Members will be able to read the proceedings in Hansard of 19th March, 1900, when Mr. Lowther pointed out that a Bill, which affected the boundaries of two authorities, which secured a majority of 162, whichwas passed unanimously on Third Reading, which had involved the expenditure of many thousands of pounds, went to another place, where it touched on a special interest, and that was the end of it. There are many hon. Gentlemen here whose authorities in much more modern times have had the same experience.
In the leading article in "The Times" this morning, it was pointed out that the justification for local legislation is that it had become a laboratory of social law, and the article quotes the experiments which Birmingham and other local authorities have carried out in various directions, including the closing of streets in order that children may be able to play, which have subsequently found their way into Private Bills. That is how democracy works, and this House ought to see that Private Bills are not used as a back door for altering the general law. If the policy of controlled experiment succeeds, well and good. Later, it could be embraced in a Public Act, giving the sanction to all authorities. If it fails, it will wither and die.
It seems to me to be a pragmatic, commonsense and rational approach to say that the time has now come, not to say that there is this or that wrong with the Private Bill procedure, but to emphasise that it is 25 years out of date and that there is a widespread feeling that it is both cumbersome and grievously expensive. If an inquiry were held, and


it came to the conclusion that those fears were groundless, the time would not have been wasted.
I want to turn to another matter. When I spoke earlier this evening I referred to the regretted absence of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), who is not with us at the moment, although I gave him notice yesterday as soon as I knew that this opportunity was likely to arise. I repeated my notice in writing.

Sir Herbert Butcher: On a point of order. How is the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) related to the Instruction which the hon. Member is moving?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not know, as yet, what the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) is going to say about the absence of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). As I understand, the Motion is related to Clause 6 and is in the form of an Instruction that the college authorities shall have the duty of considering the form of Private Bill legislation. That Instruction is in order. What the hon. Member is going to say after that I do not know

Sir H. Butcher: As you have just said that you are not clear what the hon. Gentleman is going to say, and since the hon. Gentleman started his speech before nine o'clock, is there not the danger of his committing the offence of irrelevance?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: So far, the hon. Member for Dudley has kept himself in order. The Motion he has been discussing is related to Clause 6, and so far is in order. He is now making a reference to something about the hon. Member for Croydon, East. What he is going to say about that hon. Member I have no idea.

Mr. A. C. Manuel: How much longer are we to have these criticisms from hon. Members on the Government side of your conduct of this debate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not think that that was intended as a criticism of myself.

Mr. Manuel: It was implied.

Mr. Wigg: I was genuinely regretting the absence of the hon. Member for

Croydon, East because, as he has told the House on many occasions, and has told the world at large, he is the great authority on Private Bill procedure.
I should have thought that one of the first things that the governors of Ash-ridge College would do would be to have the hon. Member on their staff. I do not think he would be much loss to us. If the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir H. Butcher) wants to know thepoint which I am making, it is that the hon. Member for Croydon, East should be invited to join the staff of Ashridge College; but that is not all my case by any means.
I find that on 16th February, 1938, there was a debate on the Second Reading of the Guildford Bill, and that on that occasion the spokesman for my party was my right hon. Friend who is now sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). He then said that he wanted to know how much longer it was to goon that a small group of self-appointed people, of whom the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) was the chief, were going to take unto themselves work which was normally reserved for a Committee of the House. The work they were undertaking was what they called "the specialised study of opposed Bills." I shall not refer to the actual words which were used by my right hon. Friend in regard to the hon. Member for East Croydon, but they were pretty strong words.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Now refer to the North Staffs Transport Bill.

Mr. Wigg: If my hon. Friend waited, he would find that the North Staffs Bill had not been forgotten in these proceedings, and that he could with advantage play his part in this part of the debate which will make it difficult for such things to happen again. In 1938, we had the hon. Member for Croydon, East and some of his hon. Friends taking unto themselves powers which should be properly exercised only by a Select Committee. I think that Members in all parts of the House have suffered in consequence.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields made allegations against the hon. Memiber for Croydon, East and his


friends, and some of those allegations were denied. We have to wait from 1938 until 19th January, 1954, when the hon. Member for Croydon, East, wrote a letter to "The Times"admitting just those things with which he had been charged in this House in 1938. In that letter he said:
Twenty years ago, Sir Reginald CroomJohnson and I formed a small group of Members of Parliament for the purpose of perusing Private Bills with a view to eliminating from them fussy interference with private liberty, and I think we have achieved a good deal of success.
It depends, of course, on what one means by "success," but there is no doubt that the hon. Member for Croydon, East has been an intolerable nuisance and that he has successfully held up the passage of Private Bills.
There has recently been a controversy about a Bill corning from Birmingham. I will not enter into the details, but the hon. Member for Croydon, East points out that, even if the citizens of Birmingham had not succeeded in halting the Bill in its course and deleting several Clauses, he and his hon. Friends—I do not know who they are—would have done the same before the House.

Sir Edward Boyle: Hear, hear.

Mr. Wigg: It may be "Hear, hear," but hon. Members should get up.
I do not want to go into the rights of Birmingham; hon. Members from Birmingham can make their speeches. The hon. Member for Croydon, East has, on his own admission, exercised an influence on Private Bill procedure which is unhealthy, anti-democratic, and which, in my opinion, should be stopped. One of the ways to stop it is to have an inquiry, with teams of reference agreed in the normal fashion between the two Front Benches.

Captain Duncan: On a point of order. It seems to me that the hon. Member is getting far away from the Instruction which he is moving.

Mr. Speaker: The Instruction draws attention to the necessity for instruction in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons for the raising of Private Business. I thought the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) was getting a little

wide of that. Perhaps he will confine himself more strictly to it, but so far as I can see he was still in order.

Mr. Wigg: Both in what I say and in spirit I am certainly the last to stray outside the rules of order. I have tried to keep inside them here and do not want to stray an inch outside.
But here, by my Instruction, I am seeking that the people responsible for Ashridge should undertake the study of the Private Bill procedure and Standing Orders of this House. It follows from that that they will see where things are wrong, and one of the things which is wrong is the hon. Member for Croydon, East—and I am going on with that until such time as the electors, who alone have the power, can deal with it. Until that blessed moment arrives, the two Front Benches, in order to strengthen, and not cheapen, the respect of the House, should institute an inquiry. I would suggest a Select Committee from both sides of the House.

Sir H. Butcher: On a point of order. The hon. Member is moving an Instruction to insert certain words into a Private Bill. He is now on that argument. I venture to say that he is not in order to request a Committee of both sides of the House.

Mr. Woodburn: Is it not perfectly reasonable to argue that, since there is great ignorance as to the way in which this procedure is working, a Select Committee should be appointed to ascertain the facts and present them to Ashridge College?

Mr. Speaker: The argument is a little far-fetched. The hon. Member for Dudley is entitled to advance arguments why the Standing Orders of the House of Commons relating to Private Businessshould be made a special subject of study in this college, but he cannot carry his arguments very far beyond that.

Mr. Wigg: I do not want to go one syllable beyond that. My case is that Private Bill procedure should be studied in Ashridge College and, todo that intelligently and to be able to understand what has happened during the last 20 years, it will have to look with care at what the hon. Member for Croydon, East has been up to.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is laying too much stress upon the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). I do not imagine that it is his intention that Ashridge College should pay particular attention to the hon. Member for Croydon, East.

Mr. Wigg: I am giving no more importance to the hon. Member for Croydon, East than he gives to himself. My case consists of a two-pronged attack. I am drawing attention to what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields said in 1938 and to what the hon. Member for Croydon, East said on 19th January of this year, which completely bears out what my right hon. Friend said about the Member for Croydon, East.

Mr. Speaker: It is high time that the two prongs of the hon. Member's attack converged upon the subject of his Instruction.

Mr. Wigg: The way to deal with this matter—

Mr. Percy Shurmer: —is to get rid of the hon. Member for Croydon East (Sir H. Williams).

Mr. Wigg: —until the happy moment arrives when the electors do their duty, is for the two Front Benches to agree that after 24 years the time has come to appoint a Select Committee to deal with this question. My case rests completely on "The Times"leading article of this morning. It would be wrong of me to suggest that a Select Committee, if it were set up, would be able to produce revolutionary changes, or that it would make slashing cuts in costs. The Committee would have to consider the rights of the objectors.

Sir E. Boyle: I fail to see how the Instruction which the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) is moving can entail the appointment of any Select Committee. Clause 6 of the Bill is concerned solely with what should be studied by the students at Ashridge College, and I fail to see how any Select Committee of this House can be involved in that.

Mr. Speaker: The appointment ofa Select Committee by this House ought to be undertaken on a Motion directed to that specific purpose. The hon. Member for Dudley has made his point, that

Standing Orders of the House relating to Private Business require further study by the House and by Ashridge College. If I understand him, that is the sole link of relevance between his speech and the Instruction, so he should take my hint and draw his remarks to a close.

Mr. Wigg: I accept that Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I was drawing my remarks to a close. I had made the point which I wished to make, that there is a case for an inquiry, so that the future students at Ashridge College may be properly instructed. It seems to me that some hon. Members opposite should go to that college for fairly lengthy courses, in order to get the benefit of the inquiry which I hope will come about as a result of our proceedings tonight.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Swingler: I beg to second the Motion.
The time will come when the borough of Dudley will be included in the great county of Stafford. Staffordshire will welcome the energetic Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg but, at the moment, a Private Bill for that purpose would be vastly too expensive for that comparatively poor county. We on this side of the House want to improve the Bill.As the House has given it a Second Reading, we are anxious that the scope of the Bill, and in particular of Clause 6, should be extended, just as we are anxious that the political balance of the governors of Ashridge should be altered in order to give some guarantee of effective education in the college.
As the new college is being formed, we are particularly concerned to emphasise the need for study of the procedure and business of the House, because we believe that students of all adult educational colleges, and particularly students of this new college, can contribute towards the improvement of the procedure of the House. Everybody knows that at the moment the Private Bill procedure is a scandal. When I say, "everybody knows it,"I mean those who have studied it and those who have had some experience of it, particularly those who represent local authorities with recent experience of it, whose ratepayers have had to pay thousands of pounds as a result of the fantastic procedure through which these Private Bills have to go.

Sir H. Butcher: On a point of order. Is it in order to refer to the rules of procedure of the House and its Standing Orders, under which Private Business is conducted, in words such as those which the hon. Member has used—on the one hand, the word "scandal," and on the other hand, the word "fantastic"?

Mr. Speaker: I think the expression "scandal"was too strong. We have to remember that the promoters of these Private Bills which we are discussing have all complied with our Standing Orders. It is not their fault that their Bills are being subjected to this scrutiny tonight. They have done what the Standing Orders provide. If there is any fault in the Standing Orders it is a fault with this House and not with the promoters.

Mr. Swingler: I am sorry if I transgressed the rules of order, and I withdraw anything I said which did so. What I meant to suggest, quite seriously, was that in my opinion it is scandalous that the ratepayers of Staffordshire, for example, should have to pay thousands of pounds for the purpose of an argument about the boundary between Staffordshire and Worcestershire involving a couple of hundred of acres—something which recently occurred in the House of Commons. I think it is in order to suggest that the procedure in the House is in need of reform, and that it is worthy of study for the purpose of suggesting how it might be reformed speedily in order to save ordinary citizens of the country from the payment of thousands of pounds on comparatively petty and trivial arguments which sensible people could deal with very quickly.
I am simply answering the question of why we suggest in the Instruction that this subject is particularly worthy of study. We have to produce an argument showing why we think that thequestion of local government reform and the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, relating to problems of local government, should be particularised in the Bill, and why we wish to instruct the Committee accordingly. We say it should be done because that is a part of the procedure of this House which is in urgent need of reform. It needs reform because of the terribly costly procedure and the thousands of pounds being paid out, which local authorities cannot afford;

and because it is obstructive to real progress in local government.
We say that when an opportunity presents itself, as it does in this case, those who are serious students of political science should pay attention to the subject immediately. In particular, if there are any students of political science in the House, especially on the Front Benches, they should immediately pay attention to the urgent question of reforming this procedure.

9.29 p.m.

Mr. M. Stewart: I rise only for a few moments, in order to say that it would be an excellent thing if students at Ashridge studied the procedure of the House, particularly as it relates to Private Bills. I can see, however, one difficulty that they may have in doing so. The necessary information which students who devote themselves to this subject would have to acquire is to be found scattered in many different books and documents. It is not reasonable to ask students to pursue the work of research which is more properly pursued by learned men devoting their whole time to learning.
If, therefore,as I think would be very desirable, students at Ashridge are to be enabled to study the proceedings of this House relating to Private Bills, we must hope that some convenient form of up-to-date information on that topic will be made available to them. From my experience of adult education, I have found that Blue Books and Parliamentary Papers of many kinds are of great value to students in providing up-to-date information on a single topic: so I feel that if we were to ask the students of Ashridge to devote particular attention to the Standing Orders of this House on Private Bill procedure, it would be of great value to enable them to do so if there was a Select Committee set up to inquire into the Private Bill procedure of this House.
I am not speaking of the value that the report of such a Select Committee might have to the House itself in the governing of the country because that would be out of order, but I stress the value that the appointment of such a Select Committee and its report would be to students at Ashridge whom we are considering at the moment, and I am happy to be associated with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and my hon. Friend the Member


for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler), not only in urging that students at Ash-ridge should study this subject, but that a Select Committee should be appointed to examine the Private Bill procedure of this House which, quite apart from its value to the country at large would be of great assistance to the students at Ashridge.

9.33 p.m.

Sir Edward Boyle: I do not know how closely students at Ashridge read reports of the proceedings of this House, but I must say that if they study our proceedings this evening they will find them of considerable interest. They are in one respect more fortunate than myself. I always find it rather difficult, in the seat which I usually occupy in this Chamber, to hear very distinctly what the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) says, but the students of Ashridge will be able to read what he says in the Official Report.
I do not think that anyone has given any very convincing reason why the students at Ashridge should have as a special study local government and its development with special reference to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. There have been quite a number of subjects suggested in the course of time as being the most useless of all branches of knowledge. Someone once said that heraldry was one of the most useless of all branches of knowledge. I must say that for the ordinary person going through an adult education course to carry on some ordinary activity of life afterwards, I can think of few subjects of less general utility than the Private Bill procedure in the House of Commons.
It may be that the students of Ashridge will disagree with me about this. I should have thought, however, that the number of occasions in life in which it was really useful to have a thorough knowledge of Private Bill procedure in the House of Commons was very limited, unless one was actually a Member of this House or an official on the staff of this House.
There is one other comment which I should like to make on the speeches which we have just heard. Anyone who reads, as I have read, Clause 6 (a) of this Bill will realise that the primary object of the Corporation of Ashridge is to

interest students, not only in the affairs of this nation, but in the affairs of the British Commonwealth and Empire as well. It is quite clear that the main object of the Corporation is to encourage peoplenot to have too parochial an outlook, but to take a real interest in the British Dominions and Her Majesty's Government in other territories in all parts of the globe.
I can imagine few things more calculated to encourage just that parochial outlook whichAshridge is intended to avoid than too much concentration on private Bills. Surely no one could be made a more useful citizen of the Commonwealth by being made to study for several weeks the precise relationships between one local authority and another and the precise line where one local authority boundary should be withdrawn.
I suggest that if we carry this, as I believe, ill-considered Instruction tonight we shall be carrying out exactly the opposite of what the Corporation of Ashridge intended. It is my belief, hearing the speeches tonight, that the terms in which paragraph (a) of Clause 6 are drawn are already sufficiently wide, and that if it is thought useful for the students of Ashridge to have some knowledge of constitutional law, there are alreadyample words in that paragraph which will enable them to have that knowledge. I do not believe it would be useful for this House to add those words to that paragraph simply because some hon. Members desire to try to raise certain points which they do not think they will have a more constitutional or useful occasion for raising.

9.37 p.m.

Mr. Usborne: I am very glad to have the good fortune to follow the hon. Member for Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), because I think that in some of the things I am about to say Ishall find, strangely, that he agrees with me. I confess, however, that on some of the things which the hon. Member has said I cannot find myself in agreement with him.
To keep strictly in order, I must make it plain that I support the Instruction so as to encourage those at Ashridge College very seriously to study the political and social sciences and political history, particularly with special reference to the development of the British Constitution.
We are dealing, in these Private Bills, with a peculiar and important facet of the British Constitution, which Ashridge should carefully study.
Furthermore, I believe that this matter is profoundly important, although it is an extremely awkward and intractable form of procedure to raise it, and for this reason. We here in Britain are inclined sometimes to assume that the political system which we operate—and which we operate, I submit, superlatively successfully—is one which other people should automatically understand and copy. We fail sometimes to realise that at this precise moment democracy is not by any means accepted throughout the world as the best system. It is under challenge. It is important, therefore, that we should ensure that the system works.
The most serious criticism generally levelled against democrats and against democracy is levelled by those who would support Fascist, Nazi or Communist theories. It is because of the attitude that democracy in theory is a fine thing but it simply does not work, cannot produce the goods in time and cannot cope with the modern complex civilisation, that those who level the criticism advocate an entirely different system.
Here we have a very complex system, which stems from an Act passed in 1933, which, in turn, I understand, stems from an Act, the Borough Funds Act, of 1872. I suggest that the directors of Ashridge should examine precisely how this procedure—Part XIII of the Local Government Act, 1933—operates in relation to Private Bills, particularly those initiated by corporations.
I should like to illustrate the point by describing what has recently happened in Birmingham. This, on 7th January last, was a classic example of how not to operate democracy. I want to say here, quite distinctly, that I am not now concerned with that procedure. I am not concerned, and this is absolutely honest, with attacking it because a Bill that was initiated and supported by a Labour-controlled council was for the large part defeated at a poll by the electors. I am not concerned with the meritsor demerits of the Bill itself, but I am greatly concerned with the procedure.
In supporting this Instruction, I want to explain the nature of this procedure because it is this procedure which I want

the directors at Ashridge so carefully to examine.Let us see how it works in relation to the initiation of a corporation Bill before it reaches this place. The Bill has to be drafted and passed through by the council itself. When the council has finished its Bill and wishes to send it to Parliament the first thing it has to do is to submit it to the Minister. The Minister himself may not approve the Bill for 10 days thereafter. During that time he has to wait in order to know whether there are any petitions from local electors drawing his attention to parts of that Bill which they do not like.
The point is that no corporation Bill can even come here unless the Minister approves of it. So there is already a check in one place bicamerally by actions which might be boisterous on the part of another assembly—the central national assembly acting as a second chamber of the local parliament or council.
If the Minister, after 10 days, has approved the draft Bill the council is obliged to advertise the object of the Bill and, in those advertisements and placards, to announce that a town meeting will be held at which all the electors in the corporation area are invited to attend, and the substance and the objects of the Bill are there to be explained to the electors. This is a point which I want the directors of Ashridge to realise. In the case of Birmingham, we had to announce that a particular corporation Bill would be explained in the town hall, a hall which could seat only approximately 2,000 people, whereas there are 720,000 electors in Birmingham. So, three-quarters of a million electors were invited to attend a meeting in a town hall which could seat only 2,000. That is the first point.
The second point is that at the town meeting the substance of the Bill is explained and the Bill may then be, as it were,put to the vote and a vote can be taken. If those who stack the meeting—and it is generally recognised that it can be stacked—then decide to vote against any Clause or against the Bill as a whole, the corporation or council can then reinstate the Bill or the Clause therein only by demanding that it be voted upon at a town poll at which all the polling stations are brought into use.
Note another anomaly out of this. A vote is taken at the town hall meeting, which is virtually a legislative one.
Theoretically, only the electors are entitled so to vote. Only 2,000 out of three-quarters of a million can get there, but there is no procedure whatever to examine the credentials of the individuals who vote. They may come not from Birmingham at all but from all over the United Kingdom because there is no possibility of discovering who they are, or whether they are on the electoral register.
The town meeting, therefore, is, in the first place, a complete farce. Let us suppose, as happened in Birmingham, that the town meeting votes against a certain Clause. The council itself can ask to put that Clause then to the Corporation poll, which it did and has to do, not fewer than 14 days or more than 28 days after the holding of the town meeting. This, infact, went to a town poll which was held on 7th January. Six Clauses had to be voted upon by the electorate, an electorate of three-quarters of a million—

Captain Duncan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would this speech not be better directed by the hon. Gentleman to the students of Ashridge than to this House?

Mr. Speaker: I was thinking that this discussion is using a very narrow peg on which to hang a very wide debate. We are dealing with Ashridge College at the moment, and the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has moved this Instruction so that special attention should be paid to local government, but that does not support the argument that the hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) is supporting now. I would ask the House to confine itself to the substance of the Instruction.

Mr. Ellis Smith: My hon. Friend has outlined the procedure that has to be adopted by local authorities and was giving concrete examples of the difficulties that face local authorities in operating the Private Bill procedure. Those of us who have suffered as a result of this procedure welcome the suggestion that an examination should be made of it, and all my hon. Friend is doing is explaining it and giving concrete examples of it.

Mr. Speaker: Examination must be made in this House ultimately, but the students of Ashridge College are power-

less to alter our Standing Orders or to legislate on these matters Whilst it is in order, a the hon. Member for Dudley did, to raise the general topic of reconsideration of these things by the House, I think that mentioning instances, examples and anomalies in the local government structure is far outside the scope of this Instruction.

Mr. M. Stewart: I would draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the hon. Member for Hands-worth (Sir E. Boyle), in replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, suggested that the Private Bill procedure of the Commons was not a useful subject for the ordinary citizen, and as I follow my hon. Friend's argument, he is putting it that it is a subject which has a vital effect on the lives of the citizens of this country. Would he not be in order in developing that view to answer the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Handsworth?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think so. I do not think that two blacks ever make a white.

Mr. Shurmer: In view of the statement made by the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) on the expense of the Birmingham Corporation Bill, which will come forward shortly, and the waste of time by the city of Birmingham, what procedure can we adopt to prevent the blocking of that Bill by the hon. Member for Croydon, East?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is raising the major point which the hon. Member for Dudley thought ought to be inquired into. That is a matter for a Motion specifically directed to that end. I do not think that this Private Bill supports an argument of this width and scope.

Mr. Usborne: I bow with respect to your judgment, Mr. Speaker, and I realise that this is rather a small peg on which to hang a very important argument. But it is in the nature of the British Constitution that there are occasions when in Parliament a subject is approached by rather devious ways, and it is that delicacy of Parliamentary democracy which makes the thing work. I agree that it must seem remarkably obtuse to the uninitiated. I was trying


very hard to keep within the rules of order, and I purposely did not attempt to duplicate any of the examples given.
I will conclude that particular aspect by pointing out that it was a very expensive and, in my view, totally undemocratic method of carrying out the decision of the electorate, precisely because it does not work out in practice. It is also extremely expensive. I should like to come back much nearer to the rules of order and ask once again that the directors of Ash-ridge should note carefully, ponder and examine the memorandum issued by the Association of Municipal Corporations which, in this context, found in 1951 that
there is a case for the revision of the present method of promoting local legislation
It goes on to point to a list of the various Bills which have been promoted and to argue much more cleverly than I have done how ludicrous and absurd the whole procedure is and how it could be improved on.

Sir H. Butcher: Is the hon. Member correct in referring to the procedure of this House as ludicrous and absurd?

Mr. Speaker: I did not take it in that sense.

Mr. Usborne: Whether it is correct to say that it is ludicrous or not happens to be a matter of opinion. I happen to thinkthat it is ludicrous in this connection, and I do not think that you, Mr. Speaker, will rule that that is extra-Parliamentary. It is on this question one of the most ludicrous procedures still extant in our Parliamentary democracy, and I think that it should be examined. I do not wish to press the point in my own words, because it has been put recently much more ably. I would choose two or three phrases from a speech made in this House and commend them to the House and to the directors of Ash ridge. On 11th February these words were spoken by an hon. Member:
We have always stood by the policy of local government, and I suggest…that particular objectors, who have voted people on to the rural council, the county council and the planning committee, really have not much complaint afterwards if those representatives decide to vote in favour of a particular proposal."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th February, 1954; Vol. 523, c. 1508.]
He was arguing that if 2·8 per cent. of the electors disagreed with a proposal it was not fair to say that it should not be proceeded with.

Mr. Speaker: I really cannot see what this has to do with Ashridge.

Mr. Usborne: It has perhaps little or nothing to do with Ashridge, but I wanted the directors of Ashridge to examine it, because these words were spoken by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, whom we wish more than anybody else to consider this procedure.

9.52 p.m.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I should Like to add a Scottish voice in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in suggesting that, when the new college is established, it would be very useful for the directors of Ashridge to look closely into this matter of Private Bill procedure in relation to local government. I put forward a personal reason for this, in that if Ashridge College is established on the non-political and non-sectarian basis suggested to us from the benches opposite, I should be very glad to partake of some of its tuition on matters of Private Bill procedure and local government, because my interest in this subject arises from the fact that I sat recently on a Private Bill Committee of this House to discuss a Bill relating to Dudley. I found it a fascinating experience which Iwould not have liked to have missed.
I found that a great deal of that experience was highly repetitious, however, because the proceedings had already taken place in another place. I found also that it was very expensively repetitious for certain of the local authorities involved. It thus seems to me that the directors of Ashridge College in giving attention to this matter would do very well to look at the Scottish example in relation to Private Bills, because in Scotland, under Acts of Parliament which date back to the end of the 19th century, there is a Joint Committee to deal with private legislation and one avoids the unnecessary and expensive duplication of putting a Private Bill through both Houses of Parliament.
The Scottish example has one other great advantage over English procedure. Since 1936 the Scottish Committee of Inquiry into any Private Bill, or Provisional Order as it is called under Scottish procedure, has been transferred to Scotland and takes place locally. I speak with feeling on the matter because, while I


gained an intimate knowledge of Dudley and Staffordshire on the Committee, it was entirely a photographic knowledge and a knowledge of maps; one could have done one's work more effectively in the physical surroundings of the problems that the Bill posed.
I would suggest to the House that this would be a most useful subject to be discussed by Ashridge College when the curriculum is being established. Not only would they find great benefit from the labours of a Select Committee of this House, but they would also find great advantage from studying what has been very successfully followed with typical Scottish economy for a long time north of the Border.

9.57 p.m.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Harry Crookshank): It may be useful if I may say a word as Leader of the House. It has been quite obvious from the ran of the discussion that there has been less enthusiasm for inserting this particular provision into the curriculum of Ashridge College than for raising the general issue of Private Bill procedure—[HON. MEMBERS"Hear, hear."] I am glad to realise that my judgment, apparently, is right, because the speech made by the hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) and his description of what happened at Birmingham would not be a very pro found matter of study for a very long time&3x2014;

Mr. Usborne: Why not?

Mr. Crookshank: Because it has nothing to do with Private Bill procedure. It is the local government Acts against which the hon. Member ought to be inveighing. That is part of the problem, admittedly, but, if we said they were to consider the Standing Orders of the House on Private Business none of the matters the hon. Member was describing would arise.

Mr. M. Stewart: That is not what my hon. Friend was asking, but that the question of local government as whole should be considered.

Mr. Crookshank: The gist of the discussion has been on Private Bill procedure. I cannot intervene in the disputes between the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). I am sure I shall be acquitted of wanting to enter that field. The allegation has been made that the procedure is cumbersome and expensive. But we ought always to remember that some sort of procedure of this kind is likely to be—I do not know whether "cumbersome"is the right word—prolonged, because the object is to adjudicate between private rights, whether as between private individuals or a corporation like that we are discussing under the Bill, or between local authorities.

Mr. Ellis Smith: We accept that it is a different matter.

Mr. Crookshank: It is a different matter and public legislation has to be gone into with very great care. I had no knowledge before that there was any great desire for a revision of this matter. Considerable changes were made in 1930 and, as our Order Paper shows, almost every Session the rules are slightly changed. I think that the last change was in October when Amendments were made. So it goes on: it is an expanding field, not limited, for all time. I would not advise the House to agree to this Instruction because I think it would be a little hard on the college to be the only one by Parliament directed to subject its students to a profound study of this very esoteric private matter. I would not advise the passing of the Instruction for that purpose.
Although the revision was made in 1930 and although Standing Orders have constantly changed since, I have, in fact, had no indication that there was any general desire for this change. But, as is my duty, I shall, of course, note everything that has been said here today.

Mr. Wigg: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — CREWE CORPORATION BILL (by Order)

INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS BILL (by Order)

RHODESIAN SELECTION TRUST LIMITED AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES BILL (by Order)

WANKIE COLLIERY BILL (by Order)

WEAR NAVIGATION AND SUNDERLAND DOCK BILL (by Order)

WESLEYAN AND GENERAL ASSURANCE SOCIETY BILL (by Order)

TOWCESTER RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL (ABTHORPE RATING) BILL (by Order)

Second Reading deferred till Thursday.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

Again considered in Committee.

It being Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.

Resolutions to be reported Tomorrow.

Committee also report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

ADJOURNMENT

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Kaberry.]

Adjourned accordingly at Two Minutes past Ten o'clock